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Facepalm: Unscrupulous resellers are nonetheless making an attempt to hawk used Seagate laborious drives as model new. After tinkering with the SMART system, the fraudsters have discovered a brand new solution to clear utilization logs and make worn-out drives seem as new. Customers can nonetheless defend themselves towards this rip-off however should be vigilant. It’s nonetheless a giant drawback that’s not going away.
A just lately up to date report by Heise on-line found that fraudsters are nonetheless discovering methods to cross off used Seagate laborious disk drives as new. Emails from deceived consumers sharing their unlucky buy expertise haven’t ended since Heise uncovered the fraud weeks in the past. The one change is that the scammers at the moment are conscious of their tell-tale errors and have developed a brand new solution to pretend utilization information.
The unique methodology, found earlier this 12 months, involved a number of methods to pretend utilization logs and make the drive look new. As Heise identified, analyzing the Area Accessible Reliability Metrics (FARM) values offers away the ruse. Now, the crooks have labored out tips on how to change even these deep-seated analytic numbers.
The FARM log system provides entry to metrics concerning drive well being, utilization, and environmental parameters. Together with SMART values, information saved in FARM logs might assist clients predict a possible drive failure occasion. The FARM log is straightforward to make use of with the appropriate instruments. That’s to say that each one clients can readily entry logged metrics utilizing brazenly accessible instruments.
Earlier than the scammers found their new tinkering methodology, customers might reliably detect a “pretend” new drive by evaluating the variety of working hours recorded by SMART values with these saved in FARM. Heise notes that this strictly hardware-based check-up methodology is now not dependable. Wanting on the saved drive information in newer, multi-terabyte Seagate Exos HDDs is ineffective now that the scammers are tampering with it.
All is just not misplaced, although. Customers can make use of ideas and methods to guard themselves towards untrustworthy sellers. First, new HDDs mustn’t have a manufacturing date older than six months. A lacking sticker on the drive’s entrance can also be an indication the drive is fraudulent. As beforehand really useful, scan the drive’s QR or barcodes and examine the guarantee expiration with the drive’s manufacture date. It needs to be just a few months greater than 5 years.
The rip-off found in January concerned closely used Seagate drives from Chia cryptocurrency miners. Chinese language coin farmers shut down most of those mining operations and tried to resell the drives, many going to respected retailers. Seagate is just not concerned within the rip-off however is investigating because it ramps up its HAMR drive manufacturing and gross sales.
