News Seagate's fraudulent hard drives scandal deepens as clues point at Chinese Chia mining farms

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The story is probably going deeper. I bought from an official seagate reseller in Germany and received 2 drives (3 if we're counting the one that was DOA) that where actually drives with SMART data wiped. Note the discrepancies in my poweron time due to the RMA of the first drive (done by the retailer).

Code: 
$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sdc  | grep Power_On_Hours
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1677
$ sudo smartctl -l farm /dev/sdc | grep -i "Power on Hours"
        Power on Hours: 25958
        Spindle Power on Hours: 1347

$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sdd  | grep Power_On_Hours
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1462
$ sudo smartctl -l farm /dev/sdd | grep -i "Power on Hours"
        Power on Hours: 25840
        Spindle Power on Hours: 1132

For people who don't want to do the maths, it seems to me that the drives have been on for ~60days (I bought them in december so makes sense) and yet show power on hours more like > 3yrs.

Seagate support is impossible to contact, the retailer seems mostly helpful so far, I obviously await their new response since reading this article...
 
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I kinda think 'rule of thumb' applies here where, "If it seems like too good of a deal, it probably is". I've seen some great deals on Seagate HDD on Amazon, but from sketchy named stores. This was last year, and a couple of years ago when I was looking to buy a bunch of 20TB drives. They were listed as "new", but I had already seen the fake USB and SD cards in the media that just made sense to avoid.
People buying from reputable stores/outlets though, you gotta kinda wonder where THEY are getting their supply, because I really, really doubt it's from Seagate. A lot of companies are doing really sleazy things, sure, but that ones way too easy to get caught on.
 
1fikk said:
The story is probably going deeper. I bought from an official seagate reseller in Germany and received 2 drives (3 if we're counting the one that was DOA) that where actually drives with SMART data wiped. Note the discrepancies in my poweron time due to the RMA of the first drive (done by the retailer).

Code: 
$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sdc  | grep Power_On_Hours
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1677
$ sudo smartctl -l farm /dev/sdc | grep -i "Power on Hours"
        Power on Hours: 25958
        Spindle Power on Hours: 1347

$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sdd  | grep Power_On_Hours
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1462
$ sudo smartctl -l farm /dev/sdd | grep -i "Power on Hours"
        Power on Hours: 25840
        Spindle Power on Hours: 1132

For people who don't want to do the maths, it seems to me that the drives have been on for ~60days (I bought them in december so makes sense) and yet show power on hours more like > 3yrs.

Seagate support is impossible to contact, the retailer seems mostly helpful so far, I obviously await their new response since reading this article...
Click to expand...
Unfortunately you seem to be forgetting that being an official Seagate reseller absolutely doesn’t mean that they turned down that friendly Chinese crypto farm that called with a deal on unusually cheap “new” Seagate drives. If they’re an official reseller and they believed they were actually new they probably just tried to sneakily add those “new” drives into the already existing distribution pool. It looks like the worst thing Seagate has done is try to hide the fact that they sold direct to crypto farms at inflated prices during the short HDD shortage Chia apparently caused from the public. You know how all these companies refused to admit they were selling direct to crypto farms when the damn crypto farms were posting pictures pallets of a single model of GPU they just received from (insert whichever AIB you want here)
 
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I am a victim of this. Around this past Black Friday I saw on NewEgg marketplace, a "very highly rated" 3rd party seller was selling 14 TB EXO X16 drives for $150, with 5 years warranty. I triple checked the fine prints that no where it said it was refurbished, so I ordered 4.

They have been sitting in the box as I have been busy with other stuff over the past few months. After reading this article I opened one up, checked the serial number on Seagate Warranty Checker, and was told it was "part of a large volume order" that Seagate won't provide any warranty. Ran smartctl, and saw discrepancy in power up hours. The normal one says 0, the FARM powerup hour is over 7000.

I'm now trying to contact NewEgg and the actual seller to arrange for return/refund. Don't like my chance. Hopefully I won't have to resort to credit card charge back.
 
How dishonest, ffs. Sorry, you took a risk and lost. Don't screw over hundreds or thousands of unsuspecting honest people from your mistakes.

I'm not saying that this sort of stuff doesn't happen in the U.S. as it certainly does, but the scale that China can crank out, well, anything, potentially makes these scandals far more pervasive.

Honor seems to be highly eroded in the land of the dragon.
 
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If you want legit cheap seagate (and other) drives, check out goharddrive.com. They sell refurbished drives at very good prices, with 5 year warranties that they honor.

Recently one of my 16TBs that I got from them threw some disturbing SMART errors, about 2 years in. I reached out to them and arranged me buying another equivalent drive from them, for about the same price, and then send back the defective one and they'd refund my purchase.

We did just that, and everything worked just perfect.

I am *NOT* affiliated with them, and I get nothing from sharing this info other than sharing good stuff with others.
 
LaminarFlow said:
I am a victim of this. Around this past Black Friday I saw on NewEgg marketplace, a "very highly rated" 3rd party seller was selling 14 TB EXO X16 drives for $150, with 5 years warranty. I triple checked the fine prints that no where it said it was refurbished, so I ordered 4.

They have been sitting in the box as I have been busy with other stuff over the past few months. After reading this article I opened one up, checked the serial number on Seagate Warranty Checker, and was told it was "part of a large volume order" that Seagate won't provide any warranty. Ran smartctl, and saw discrepancy in power up hours. The normal one says 0, the FARM powerup hour is over 7000.

I'm now trying to contact NewEgg and the actual seller to arrange for return/refund. Don't like my chance. Hopefully I won't have to resort to credit card charge back.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately NewEgg will likely leave you firmly in chargeback territory.
 
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