German computer magazine 'ct reported that there are quite a few fake 'new' drives on the market where smart data have been manipulated to report lower power on hours. Luckily Seagate has an extended set of data stored on their drives which can’t be deleted easily. So, if you’re in doubt you can check yourself whether the drive you bought has genuine smart data in the table or if those have been manipulated. You need smartmontools 7.4 installed on your server which is the fact on new server versions. How to check:
smartctl --scan-open
: the command returns the hard drives
smartctl -a /dev/daX
: (0-number of drives in the system) will show smart table (incl. Power On Hours and health status); option '-x' will print the same but more detailed
smartctl -l farm /dev/daX
: the command can only be run on Seagate hard drives. It collects FARM data. On the second page there are entries about real Power On Hours. Other useful data include max. temperature and how long the drive has been exposed to this temperature. And a ton of data detailing health status, etc. p.p.
https://www.ghacks.net/2025/01/30/how-to-verify-seagate-hard-drives-running-hours-after-used-sold-as-new-scandal/
It’s worth noting that Seagate has absolutely nothing to do with these fraud manipulations. In fact, Seagate is the only drive manufacturer which stores an extra set of data on their drives to compare and find possible manipulations. Also FARM data can be reset (and will) on factory re-certified drives.