On the shelves of the largest retail networks in Germany were the former consumer Seagate wheels under the guise of new ones. The German edition of Heise.de, whose readers reported a significant number of such facts, spoke about the alleged fraudulent scheme.
Image source: seagate.com
One of the readers of the publication acquired two 14-a-a-a-tay hard disk of the Seagate Exos series, which, upon closer examination, seemed somewhat strange. They had some external signs of wear, but the statistics of Smart anomalies did not reveal. But the thorough Field Accessible Reliabiles Metrics (FARM) showed that one drive has already worked for 10,000 hours and the other – 15,000 hours. The buyer returned the discs to the same store, and it was the official Seagate dealer, and purchased two drives of 16 TB in another store. But they turned out to be used – each has developed 22,000 hours.
In both stores, they assured that these were completely new models for retail. Seagate reported that these were OEM models, which did not apply to the usual five-year guarantee. The first of the stores removed the model for 14 and 16 TB from the sale and even canceled the order, which the Heise.de publication made anonymously. Now the company is investigating how this could happen, especially since one of the sellers was its official representative.
After the publication of the first material, more than fifty readers of the publication reported a similar problem arising from the purchase of Seagate hard drives. They purchased drives from different retail sellers, including those whom the manufacturer himself recommended; Some of them turned out to be large companies, including Amazon and the famous MindFactory online store in Germany. Most readers pointed to EXOS wheels with a capacity of 16 TB, others had 12 TB models, and drivers of other series from 4 to 18 TB were also noted. The service life of them was from 15,000 to 36,000 hours, and two discs of 4 TB worked all 50,000 hours.
The editors of Heise.de checked several copies at random and found that most of the guarantee ends in 2026. If we accept that its term is five years, it turns out that they were produced and sold in 2021. In all cases, the former drives have acquired over the past few weeks, which means that the problem has arisen relatively recently. It is hard to imagine that such an incident was caused by an error or shortage: too many retail sellers are involved in it, and Smart statistics were dropped on the discs – this is in the hands of those who would like to give out a used drive for a new one.
It is worth noting that Seagate is actively working with used hard drives of its own production. About a year ago, the company launched an official store on Ebay, where it sells restored drives. Seagate has also launched the Hard Drive Circularity Program initiative, which helps to detect harsh discs suitable for restoration, including EXOS models. But the store on Ebay sells goods only to American customers and does not work with the Germans.