I think a criminal investigation needs to be started on this to determine how widespread and if Seagate upper management is behind/aware of it. This "could" be the work of some downstream distributor, or a 3rd party perhaps that handles RMAs for Seagate and maybe Seagate is unaware and innocent. I hope that is not just wishful thinking. It has been awhile since I have purchased a Seagate hard drive (any hard drive, actually - instead going SSD), but I do have a couple Seagate hard drives here and in checking, both have the manufacturing date (MO/YYYY) printed on the label. I guess as consumers, we will need to pay attention to that manufacturing date and the condition of the connectors when buying any new drive. Of course, an old date could just mean it sat on the warehouse shelf for awhile before being sold.
If we can assume the date is valid. There used to be a local supermarket here that would repackage old meat with a new date. Could be done with any object I would think. Just slap on a new sticker.
Yes, we would have to assume the date is valid. Rewrapping meat with new packaging and new label would not be noticeable to the consumer - at least if it passed the smell test. The labels on hard drives would be near impossible to remove without leaving a telltale sign and applying a second label over the first would be just as easy to spot.
I think it important to point out that this "appears" to be the work some 3rd party bad guys, not Seagate - with Chinese Chia mining farms being the likely suspects. At least, at this point, there is no evidence Seagate was involved in the scam. Of course, once they are able to "follow the money", the truth will come out. We (as consumers) can only hope the money trail does not lead back to Seagate.
An end-user may use any of many HDD helpful utilities to display the S.M.A.R.T. attributes for tell-tail signs of obvious prior use. Reference: https://www.howtogeek.com/134735/check-ssd-or-hdd-health-with-smart/ HTH
The Ghacks article said: "Some readers who experienced the issue noticed signs of wear on the devices. A check of the drive's SMART values however returned nothing out of the ordinary according to reports. Usage was close enough to that of newly bought hard drives. Heise reports that the checking of SMART values won't reveal the used nature of the drives. Users need to look at Seagate's FARM values instead. FARM stands for Field Accessible Reliability Metrics."
Thank you, @Stupendous Man ! It looks like Smartmontools v7.4 is qualified to display Seagate's FARM values as well. It, too, displays S.M.A.R.T. attributes. I run this in a scheduled script myself. HTH
