Seagate hard drives previously used in Chia cryptocurrency mining have been resold as new products, raising concerns among buyers. An investigation by Heise has uncovered that a significant number of these high-mileage drives, particularly the Seagate Exos models, have entered the market in regions such as Europe, Australia, Thailand, and Japan.
These drives often show thousands of operational hours, despite being advertised as brand new. The surge in demand for high-capacity storage during the cryptocurrency boom led many mining operations to purchase large quantities of HDDs. As Chia mining profitability declined, numerous farms shut down, selling their hardware to unsuspecting retailers.
To help buyers verify the true usage history of their Seagate HDDs, diagnostic tools are available. Although SMART parameters can be reset to obscure prior usage, the FARM (field-accessible reliability metrics) values provide a more accurate record. Users can run the command smartctl -l farm /dev/sda using Smartmontools version 7.4 or higher, or utilize Seagate’s Seatools software.
Seagate has stated it only distributes genuine hard drives through official channels and suspects that these used HDDs entered the secondary market before being sold to consumers. The company has launched an investigation and encourages affected buyers to report suspicious purchases to fraud@seagate.com.
Retailers are responding to the issue. Galaxus has created online help pages for affected customers, while Proshop is offering free returns and replacements. Alternate, a German retailer, has urged customers to report used drives, and Wortmann insists on verifying HDDs before providing compensation.
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