You can read out the FARM logs of Seagate hard drives using<p><pre><code> smartctl -l farm /dev/sd<n>
</code></pre>
They're supposed to be "more trustworthy" than the regular SMART stats.<p>(My two "new" 16TB Exos drives had 0 hours (regular) and ~18k hours (farm) - DOM 04JUN2021 and 07JUN2021. Also, zfs refused to format the drive: 'already formatted as ddf_raid_member'.)
I had enough problems with new Seagate Exos drives (actually new, not remanufactured or whatever these folks ended up with,) that I've taken to buying used Western Digital Ultrastar drives on Amazon for my NAS. They're cheaper, and so far, reliable enough. I wrote a little more about my rationale[0], but, basically:<p>1. With RAID-6, I can take two drive failures, and it is quicker to get a replacement off Amazon than wait for an OEM to RMA a drive under warranty<p>2. The Ultrastars have been pretty reliable in Backblaze's published data<p>3. The reseller I went through seems reliable enough<p>4. There's at least some evidence these "remanufactured" drives are coming from the OEMs, and based on past experience working at a few hardware manufacturers, the no trouble found rate for RMA'd hardware is typically quite high - to the point there is likely to be nothing wrong with a product that has been returned under warranty.<p>I guess a side benefit of this is at least I know I'm buying used drives.<p>0 - <a href="https://marcusb.org/posts/2024/03/used-hard-drives-from-tech-on-tech/" rel="nofollow">https://marcusb.org/posts/2024/03/used-hard-drives-from-tech...</a>
Those Exos drives have been popular with homelab types because they are usually $50-$100 cheaper than prosumer drives that claim to save maybe 0.5 W and 2-3 db of noise on the datasheet. (The latter could be effaced by a bad bearing anywhere in your build, I haven't seen either claim tested by a review site)<p>It's funny but in this case the enterprise product is the cheap mainstream product and the 10-20 SKUs aimed at prosumers are the exotic expensive products. It is senseless to me that vendors like WD make special SKUs for security camera use or for 2-3 bay NAS, 4-7 bay NAS, etc when all it means is Best Buy won't stock any of them, development costs are spread out over fewer units, more versions of firmware and hardware to have bugs, etc.
Article is about reports from German customers (this is clear in the orignal title, but not the current HN title), and mostly with 16TB Exos HDDs.<p>FWIW, I just bought a bunch of Seagate HDDs (US vendor) and my warranty periods line up with the DOMs on the packaging.<p>You can check your warranty period/status at:<p><a href="https://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-replacements" rel="nofollow">https://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-replacements</a>
One way some companies and merchants deal with high inflation and increasing price pressure seems to be declining quality. I've seen similar things happening more frequently in different markets, not just tech. If you notice something like it, the best way to deal with it imo is ask for your money back, make it public if possible and boycott the business from then on. Customers need to penalize such behavior as much as possible or soon we can't trust anything anymore. Hard disks especially are one of the most critical components, you don't want failures there.
Has anyone had experience involving the police in matters like this?<p>I reached out to the German news source that first reported on this issue, but they couldn’t help. The writer of the article mentioned that "The dealer will probably hide behind the supplier."<p>Here's the response I received today from Böttcher AG, where I purchased the hard drives, after sending them the FARM logs and photos of the drives (translated from German):<p>---<p>"Dear Sir or Madam,<p>Attached you will find the manufacturer's feedback regarding your complaint:<p>Please send the hard drives back. You will receive a credit immediately upon receipt.<p>We are currently unable to provide a statement, as we need to first examine the hard drive and the situation. Therefore, please ask the customer to hand over the hard drive to you.<p>You will promptly receive a refund of the purchase price and the shipping costs. As soon as we have a statement from our supplier, we will inform you immediately."<p>---<p>Given this, I am wondering if anyone has dealt with a situation like this and whether it's worth involving the police to ensure compensation for the damages or if this process should be handled through other legal channels. Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!
> The time used ranges from 15,000 to 36,000 hours except for two 4TB HDDs, which were both used for about 50,000 hours<p>20000 hours is more than 24 months. 50000 is five and half years.<p>Someone is probably selling drives that are being retired from datacenters.
> the company launched an official eBay store that sells refurbished drives. [...] However, this store only sells in the US<p>One could make a joke that seagate did start selling refurbs in EU, just without telling anyone.
Why is it always seagate when there's something wrong with HDDs?
Years ago, a Seagate HD suddenly crashed. Wasn't particularly old.<p>Then some point later, there was a good deal on Seagate HDs, and I bought another one.<p>Also crashed "early" in its life.<p>I never buy them again. The main PC building forum I used to frequent also have a pinned topic announcing that they've lost all hope with Seagate and will <i>never</i> recommend it for anyone asking for help on a build. That was 10 years ago, and last I checked they still stuck to that policy.<p>Don't buy Seagate.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/20.1" rel="nofollow">https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/20.1</a>
[2] <a href="https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/</a>
From the original heise.de article (<a href="https://www.heise.de/news/Betrug-mit-Seagate-Festplatten-Dutzende-Leser-melden-Verdachtsfaelle-10258657.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.heise.de/news/Betrug-mit-Seagate-Festplatten-Dut...</a>):<p>> 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.<p>Given the number of affected retailers, I wonder if a distributor in Germany messed up somewhere.
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.<p>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 HDD from somewhere that is not Amazon. Impossible to tell if they're selling a new or refurbished drive, a SATA or SAS drive or if it'll make it here safely.
The headline makes this out to be deception by Seagate but the article reads as if it's just one shady, but approved distributor who's sneaking these out as new drives.
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 :)<p>Shout out to <a href="https://diskprices.com/" rel="nofollow">https://diskprices.com/</a>
Enterprise drives that make it into retail channels have been suspect for years and I've received used/dead drives from Amazon, Newegg, etc. pretty habitually.<p>I pretty much only buy them from Newegg anymore if I have to buy retail and even then my return rate for receiving DOA drives is nearly 50%.<p>Where I don't have this problem is buying via my server vendor contract w/ our Dell reseller. Buying enterprise drives through enterprise sales channels they always arrive new.
I won't ever touch Segate because at one point they released 3TB hdds that were failing catastrophically in 1-2 years of desktop use. I've lost some stuff I shouldn't have.
This reminded me the time I bought a brand new HDD only to notice at home it was labelled as “refurbished”, next day I returned it, they guys from the shop didn’t want to admit this wasn’t a new part, after much back and forth they agreed to refund me. If my memory serves me well that was a Seagate drive, I hope they didn’t become sloppy with labelling.
> after a quick look at the SMART stats, everything appeared normal. Later, though, the reader did a more thorough Field Accessible Reliability Metrics (FARM) test and discovered [that it wasn't]<p>I had a look at how to run these FARM tests, and it seems I want smartctl 7.4 (which is too new for Debian stable but available in backports).
Seagate’s entire warranty program seems to be a mess. Every time I have to deal with them I get this endless runaround where they demand ridiculous amounts of “proof” that the drive failed, or deny that the drive is under US warranty (bought it new in the US from Newegg).<p>At one point I made it a mission to proactively correct the warranty records for the dozen or so Seagate drives I had in operation that had incorrect warranty terms showing in the RMA portal. Every day I’d contact them, give them my case number, and the customer service rep would “pull up the record” but still need me to list all the serial numbers again. Every couple tries, a few of the serials would get their warranties fixed. Towards the end they claimed that one of the drives was already returned as failed and destroyed by Seagate, and another one didn’t even exist. They made me literally pull the drives out of live systems and send them photos, and when I did, they continued with more excuses to not fix the warranty terms in the RMA portal. But I just tried again each day with a new rep, some
of whom would fix some of the remaining drives, and eventually each drive got its warranty fixed.<p>Another time, they sent me a failed drive as a replacement, so I had to RMA my RMA. They cross-shipped me a replacement, but then lost my return in their own depot and tried telling me they never got it and I needed to either get it delivered or pay them for it.<p>Fuck Seagate.