Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#91

Post by toast0 » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

Cerium wrote: post #19

Hamuko wrote: post #7

I've recently been browsing Amazon.de listings for a new HDD and I'm pretty sure I saw someone complain about their supposedly new Seagate EXOS already having hours on it. I also saw listings for SATA drives where the reviews were complaining about receiving SAS drives and complaints about bare HDDs being shipped rattling around in large cardboard boxes. I think the only conclusion I reached was that I should buy my…

Why buy any drives from Amazon? I always buy from a specialty dealer. Where I am that's usually B&H.

It's always more exciting to put your important data on a drive that's been shipped in a box that's much too big for it, with much too little packing material.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#92

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62

scrlk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet would be on someone in a warehouse mislabelling a pallet or something. Actual malice is a possibility, but it does seem odd to blow up an entire distribution business for some 16 TB HDDs, when HDDs aren't supply constrained at the moment. There were all sorts of shenanigans going on in 2020-21 when supply chains were disrupted (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-... ).

>> It’s hard to imagine this is just a simple mixup, not just because so many retailers are apparently involved but also because they’ve all had their SMART stats reset, which would be very useful to someone trying to pretend a used drive is new.

[deleted]

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#93

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #74

jasonjayr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the enclosure kill reliability?

External drives are often designed for a shorter duty cycle and don't dissipate heat as well as they could.

People have been battle testing those cheap as possible external drives on top of hot xboxs in enclosed cabinets for years and years now. Backup, and I would think failure rates would be too small to consider.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#94

Post by efitz » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

This is specifically illegal in the US[1] (and probably everywhere). If this were in the US then it would be prudent for the buyer to contact the FTC[2] and their local state AG.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/20.1 [2] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#95

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

darknavi wrote: post #82

If you're looking for cheap bulk storage, refurbished/used is a great way to go. It'd just be nice if they told you that's what you were getting :) Shout out to https://diskprices.com/

Some of the ebay sellers are super honest with their product they are moving too. I saw a photo of a wd red, it looked like someone tried to destroy it with a blowtorch. But they could have easily lied and put up the wd stock product photo.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#96

Post by malfist » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #46

scrlk wrote: post #22

From the original heise.de article ( https://www.heise.de/news/Betrug-mit-Seagate-Festplatten-Dut... ): > According to readers, various retailers supplied the hard drives, with Amazon, JB Computer, Mindfactory and Reichelt being mentioned in numerous cases. Others mentioned: Alternate, Böttcher, Büroshop 24, Galaxus, Jacob, Kosatec, Maingau and Proshop - some of which are on the list of official Seagate retailers. Gi…

> messed up somewhere How do you "mess up" the smart hours accidentally?

Judging by the hard drives you get from amazon, you mess up smart hours by forgetting to flash them to zeros.

Hard drive fraud is rampant, to the point I'm hanging on to ancient 4TB HDDs because I don't want to reward someone for fraud.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#97

Post by duskwuff » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

lmpdev wrote: post #68

vel0city wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WD make special SKUs for security camera use The workload for a security camera or a DVR is going to be pretty different from a lot of NAS devices or desktop/server use. Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) is fine for things like a security camera, where you're just going to be writing long files and probably just overwrite eventually. SMR is really bad if you need lots of random sparse file modifications. I do agree…

Yes PSA to anyone reading: do not use Purple drives for anything non-DVR/NVR related

Is there something that makes them unsuitable for other workloads?

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#98

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

knute wrote: post #10

Hamuko wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any WD model have its own Wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST3000DM001 (I had one, it died just after its warranty ended but Seagate did send me a replacement after bitching about it for long enough.)

There's an IBM Deathstar (sold to Hitachi, sold to WD) model that has its own section, at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskstar#IBM_Deskstar_75GXP_fa...

[deleted]

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#99

Post by quesera » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

xnorswap wrote: post #64

JAlexoid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I see, the majority of HDDs on Amazon are now used devices. Which isn't necessarily bad... HDDs have a much longer lifespan than SSDs. I expect my used HDDs to last at least 5years in my RAID5 setup.

How is listing used devices as new "not necessarily bad"? It's fraud.

Amazon sells both "new" and "refurbished" HDDs.

They are clearly marked in the description, but this is often awkwardly-conveniently after the truncation point for search results listings, so you need to be vigilant.

In contrast, the article is about used devices sold as new, and with SMART counters reset.

That absolutely smells like fraud -- though to be fair, I can concoct at plausible sequence of errors and omissions that arrives at the same result.

I expect that someone with subpoena power will need to take it from here.

Re: Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

#100

Post by scrlk » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62

scrlk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet would be on someone in a warehouse mislabelling a pallet or something. Actual malice is a possibility, but it does seem odd to blow up an entire distribution business for some 16 TB HDDs, when HDDs aren't supply constrained at the moment. There were all sorts of shenanigans going on in 2020-21 when supply chains were disrupted (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-... ).

>> It’s hard to imagine this is just a simple mixup, not just because so many retailers are apparently involved but also because they’ve all had their SMART stats reset, which would be very useful to someone trying to pretend a used drive is new.

If the distributor is dealing with new and refurb stock, I wouldn't be surprised if the refurb stock is being sourced from a more questionable supply chain.

Just speculation on my part, but I'm going to guess that something like this happened: old HDDs were removed from a DC, sent to a recycler, and the recycler sold the HDDs to a sketchy refurbisher that wipes SMART data. A supplier buys from the refurbisher, and the distributor buys the refurbished HDDs (without doing proper due diligence on the supplier or verifying the stock they were receiving). There's a mix-up between new and refurbished stock in the distributor's warehouse, which then results in various retailers receiving these bad refurbished HDDs.

Alternatively, the distributor went through unofficial/grey market channels to source these "new" HDDs. IMO, this veers into malice. No reputable distributor would gamble their reputation on sourcing new components via unofficial channels, as the risk of getting burned with counterfeits is high these days.