Seagate and tampered Exo's and Irowolf HDD's

georgelza

georgelza

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Originally bought 5. within days from fitting into my TrueNas Scale, into a common disk pool started getting errors reported via the SMART tests.
Brought it under the dealers attention and he refunded me 1 drive that outright failed. I proceeded to buy another 2 drives from a different dealer at AliExpress...

Well out of those 7, all but 1 is showing LONG Test problems. Both dealers ignoring all comm.

The original deals response, he already refunded me... ignoring the fact that it was for the first drive and out of the 5 I bought all but 4 failed.

I then thought lets rather try a Exo's drive... just after ordering that and getting shipping notification the entire debargle became public (originally it was just the SMART data that was being tampered with, but it has now come out they modifying the FARM data also, and this is what I saw on my Exo drive, )... At which point I took it up with the original dealer of the 5 and the Exo drive and with AliExpress..

I installed the drive the Monday, ran a long test, by Tuesday morning the drive showed just under 2000 hours of run time, and 70 power cycles...

I originally said, I don't beleive anyone was aware of the problem, the problem is probably upstream in the supply chain and they are just innocent outlets for the drives...

But... AliExpresses after repeatedly providing them and the dealers with the proof is refusing to have any further communication and have closed all dispute tickets.

This for me makes them now complicit in the fraud. All I wanted was they can do a collections of the drives and refund,

Share as far and wide as you can....
 
Faux_Grey said:
Thought this was old news:
www.tomshardware.com

Fraudulent hard drive scandal deepens at Seagate: Clues point at Chinese Chia mining farms

Do not buy from unofficial resellers
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

Seagate refurb drives are all from Chia mining farms with thousands of hours of runtime on them.
Click to expand...
Nope, they starting to show up out of Germany also.

Originally it was just the Exo drives and originally only SMART data tampered with, it now includes Ironwolf and they some how modifying FARM also.
G
 
You can add HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) drives as well to the list

Had a bad experience with 2 x 2TB HGST drives, was going to use the drives as replacement for my NAS

Did tests with GSmartControl on both drives, just to realise that the SMART diagnostics was tampered with, the people selling these drives could not erase all the SMART data, the one drive reported 17 000 hours, with over 3 million writes, the other over 45 000 hours with over 1 million writes

When I queried this with the online supplier, they in turn queried their distributor, who admitted that it was “pulled drives”, thus not new but very well used

The online supplier and distributor are both South African companies

The distributor is also a data recovery company

The drive labels did not indicate that this was used or “refurbished” hard drives

The online supplier did not want to exchange the used hard drives with new, but offered instead to refund the money, which they did

Unfortunately the online supplier is still selling these hard drives, the price increased from R 795 to R 1155, but the model numbers is still the same. To me that is fraud...selling known used hard drives as new (the two websites with these drives for sale is still up on 15 March 2025)

And before anyone ask, yes I do have all the documentation, reports, screenshots with date stamps, emails at hand
 
ye... same view my side, when you do this not knowing... i can accept that, then deal with it correctly... but once i proof to you of whats going on, and you continue to allow it and turn a blind eye... then you complicit...

oh btw for those that ask why we buy from someone like AliExpress... some offer items with zero shipping cost, as a option, still insured... but it takes longer... then you just pay for the item, the "much more direct" from wholesale supplier that makes something like a HDD 1/2 the local price... no we don't expect fraud as we know local prices... is like 6 ppl deep which each wants his 15-25%...

as a example, see the diagram... this exact same caller is R2400 in SA... no this is not a copy, this is the real thing, from a factory store vs a SA price...

Screenshot 2025-03-15 at 13.33.42.png
 
creaky said:
You can add HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) drives as well to the list

Had a bad experience with 2 x 2TB HGST drives, was going to use the drives as replacement for my NAS

Did tests with GSmartControl on both drives, just to realise that the SMART diagnostics was tampered with, the people selling these drives could not erase all the SMART data, the one drive reported 17 000 hours, with over 3 million writes, the other over 45 000 hours with over 1 million writes

When I queried this with the online supplier, they in turn queried their distributor, who admitted that it was “pulled drives”, thus not new but very well used

The online supplier and distributor are both South African companies

The distributor is also a data recovery company

The drive labels did not indicate that this was used or “refurbished” hard drives

The online supplier did not want to exchange the used hard drives with new, but offered instead to refund the money, which they did

Unfortunately the online supplier is still selling these hard drives, the price increased from R 795 to R 1155, but the model numbers is still the same. To me that is fraud...selling known used hard drives as new (the two websites with these drives for sale is still up on 15 March 2025)

And before anyone ask, yes I do have all the documentation, reports, screenshots with date stamps, emails at hand
Click to expand...
This has been my same experience, and I immediately stopped selling their products (altogether) once the writing was on the wall. Seagate says they're not an approved Seagate distributor and that they "won't comment on the drives origin or why they're so cheap." When I say cheap, I'm talking 60% cheaper than the approved Seagate distributors.

Several years ago, I had a customer (friend of mine) comment that the drives he purchased (Exos 16) had a few thousand hours of use on them. Keep in mind that these drives were sourced as brand new, no indication that they're used/refurbished. Same as the retailer you're talking about (I honestly don't know who it is), I offered a refund rather than replacement as replacement would have meant sourcing the drives elsewhere at more than double the price, although he declined as he was still happy with the price/capacity even though I wasn't happy with the sale.

You might find that the price increase from R 795 to R 1,155 is from the retailer changing to a different distributor.

In all cases, blame the distributor, not the manufacturer.
 
georgelza said:
Originally bought 5. within days from fitting into my TrueNas Scale, into a common disk pool started getting errors reported via the SMART tests.
Brought it under the dealers attention and he refunded me 1 drive that outright failed. I proceeded to buy another 2 drives from a different dealer at AliExpress...

Well out of those 7, all but 1 is showing LONG Test problems. Both dealers ignoring all comm.

The original deals response, he already refunded me... ignoring the fact that it was for the first drive and out of the 5 I bought all but 4 failed.

I then thought lets rather try a Exo's drive... just after ordering that and getting shipping notification the entire debargle became public (originally it was just the SMART data that was being tampered with, but it has now come out they modifying the FARM data also, and this is what I saw on my Exo drive, )... At which point I took it up with the original dealer of the 5 and the Exo drive and with AliExpress..

I installed the drive the Monday, ran a long test, by Tuesday morning the drive showed just under 2000 hours of run time, and 70 power cycles...

I originally said, I don't beleive anyone was aware of the problem, the problem is probably upstream in the supply chain and they are just innocent outlets for the drives...

But... AliExpresses after repeatedly providing them and the dealers with the proof is refusing to have any further communication and have closed all dispute tickets.

This for me makes them now complicit in the fraud. All I wanted was they can do a collections of the drives and refund,

Share as far and wide as you can....
Click to expand...

Any reason why you didn't just buy from a proper online store like Wootware or from FirstShop ?
 
Progenix Oj101 said:
This has been my same experience, and I immediately stopped selling their products (altogether) once the writing was on the wall. Seagate says they're not an approved Seagate distributor and that they "won't comment on the drives origin or why they're so cheap." When I say cheap, I'm talking 60% cheaper than the approved Seagate distributors.

Several years ago, I had a customer (friend of mine) comment that the drives he purchased (Exos 16) had a few thousand hours of use on them. Keep in mind that these drives were sourced as brand new, no indication that they're used/refurbished. Same as the retailer you're talking about (I honestly don't know who it is), I offered a refund rather than replacement as replacement would have meant sourcing the drives elsewhere at more than double the price, although he declined as he was still happy with the price/capacity even though I wasn't happy with the sale.

You might find that the price increase from R 795 to R 1,155 is from the retailer changing to a different distributor.

In all cases, blame the distributor, not the manufacturer.
Click to expand...
Had a customer get a drive with a couple of hours on it before... turns out was also dead a week later. Luckly we won that argument and replaced it.
My_King said:
Nor 1TB Micro SD cards
Click to expand...
Yeah no those id avoid
 
georgelza said:
Originally bought 5. within days from fitting into my TrueNas Scale, into a common disk pool started getting errors reported via the SMART tests.
Brought it under the dealers attention and he refunded me 1 drive that outright failed. I proceeded to buy another 2 drives from a different dealer at AliExpress...

Well out of those 7, all but 1 is showing LONG Test problems. Both dealers ignoring all comm.

The original deals response, he already refunded me... ignoring the fact that it was for the first drive and out of the 5 I bought all but 4 failed.

I then thought lets rather try a Exo's drive... just after ordering that and getting shipping notification the entire debargle became public (originally it was just the SMART data that was being tampered with, but it has now come out they modifying the FARM data also, and this is what I saw on my Exo drive, )... At which point I took it up with the original dealer of the 5 and the Exo drive and with AliExpress..

I installed the drive the Monday, ran a long test, by Tuesday morning the drive showed just under 2000 hours of run time, and 70 power cycles...

I originally said, I don't beleive anyone was aware of the problem, the problem is probably upstream in the supply chain and they are just innocent outlets for the drives...

But... AliExpresses after repeatedly providing them and the dealers with the proof is refusing to have any further communication and have closed all dispute tickets.

This for me makes them now complicit in the fraud. All I wanted was they can do a collections of the drives and refund,

Share as far and wide as you can....
Click to expand...
You buying something that can store sensitive data (encrypted or not) from Aliexpress? Lol do you juggle blindly with knives for fun as well? :p
 
The distributor who supplied the “pulled drives” is CSSi, the online retailer is ComX Computers

CSSi is a data recovery company

HGST (Hitachi) was sold to Western Digital in 2012, Amazon.com sell them as [Renewed]

Don't know how a hard drive can be Renewed...thought it is either new or used, maybe if the SMART diagnostic values are reset to zero (or tried to) then the drive is renewed
 
creaky said:
The distributor who supplied the “pulled drives” is CSSi, the online retailer is ComX Computers

CSSi is a data recovery company

HGST (Hitachi) was sold to Western Digital in 2012, Amazon.com sell them as [Renewed]

Don't know how a hard drive can be Renewed...thought it is either new or used, maybe if the SMART diagnostic values are reset to zero (or tried to) then the drive is renewed
Click to expand...
Seen those before i just ...ignore them (not locally)

maybe they changed the needle or something... still wont touch it

CSSi... isnt that that ITWorkup company? or not company i donno that thread was drama

my only wish with HDD's is that got packed in thick foam in a box instead of a static bag.
 
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