"New" Hard Drives with 20,000+ Hours of Use Being Sold

General Discussion
1

Hey everyone,

it seems that a lot of hard drives are currently being sold as new, but they actually already have 20,000+ hours of use on them!

I haven’t found another post about this, so I decided to make one. If there is already a discussion on this, I apologize for opening another thread.

You can check the usage time of your drive using:

smartctl -l farm /dev/sd#

(Replace /dev/sd# with your actual drive identifier.)
The SMART values got reset.

Here’s a link to a news article covering this issue: Hard disk fraud: Increasing evidence of origin in China

Be sure to verify your drives when purchasing. Hope this helps!

For reference, here’s an excerpt from my own output:

truenas_admin@truenas[~]$ sudo smartctl -l farm /dev/sda
smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-linux-6.6.44-production+truenas] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Seagate Field Access Reliability Metrics log (FARM) (GP Log 0xa6)
        FARM Log Page 0: Log Header
                FARM Log Version: 3.7
                Pages Supported: 6
                Log Size: 98304
                Page Size: 16384
                Heads Supported: 24
                Number of Copies: 0
                Reason for Frame Capture: 0
        FARM Log Page 1: Drive Information
                Serial Number: 
                World Wide Name: 
                Device Interface: SATA
                Device Capacity in Sectors: 31251759104
                Physical Sector Size: 4096
                Logical Sector Size: 512
                Device Buffer Size: 268435456
                Number of Heads: 18
                Device Form Factor: 3.5 inches
                Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
                Firmware Rev: SB30    
                ATA Security State (ID Word 128): 0x01629
                ATA Features Supported (ID Word 78): 0x016cc
                ATA Features Enabled (ID Word 79): 0x0000000000000044
                Power on Hours: 25496
                Spindle Power on Hours: 2215
                Head Flight Hours: 2212
                Head Load Events: 100
                Power Cycle Count: 31
                Hardware Reset Count: 79
                Spin-up Time: 11 ms
                Time to ready of the last power cycle: 21968 ms
                Time drive is held in staggered spin: 0 ms
                Model Number: ST16000NM001G-2KK103                    
                Drive Recording Type: CMR
                Max Number of Available Sectors for Reassignment: 57754
                Assembly Date (YYWW): 
                Depopulation Head Mask: 0
        FARM Log Page 2: Workload Statistics
                Total Number of Read Commands: 142338639
                Total Number of Write Commands: 83838378
                Total Number of Random Read Commands: 14391470
                Total Number of Random Write Commands: 12673347
                Total Number Of Other Commands: 10679704
                Logical Sectors Written: 94780585504
                Logical Sectors Read: 32929344367
                Number of dither events during current power cycle: 458
                Number of times dither was held off during random workloads: 1655
                Number of times dither was held off during sequential workloads: 3933
                Number of Read commands from 0-3.125% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Read commands from 3.125-25% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Read commands from 25-75% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Read commands from 75-100% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Write commands from 0-3.125% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Write commands from 3.125-25% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Write commands from 25-75% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0
                Number of Write commands from 75-100% of LBA space for last 3 SMART Summary Frames: 0

The important line here is:
Power_On_Hours: 25496

I only had the drive for 3 month

2

Note that FARM is only available for Seagate drives.

3

You may also check the Serial for Warranty

Garantie und Rückgaben | Seagate Deutschland

Western Digital Product Warranty Coverage

@kulerkopf checking the head-flight-time it doesnt seem so bad. probably a hotspare which was never been written to. same here got 4 different drives all had an invalid warranty check and F.A.R.M Values exposed a PowerOnTime of more than 10.000 hours. However the Head-Flight time is very low, so i assume i’ll keep it, as i see no other options on the market now

4

I already checked the warranty, and it’s invalid for all of them (I also have 4).

Are you sure that the Head-Flight Hours weren’t reset together with the SMART values? Because mine are almost the same as the SMART Power_On_Hours (only a 3-hour difference).

5

cant tell. but i would expect you can either reset all FARM Values or None.

So this is mine:

FARM
Power on Hours: 12239
Spindle Power on Hours: 102
Head Flight Hours: 25
Logical Sectors Written: 37753736040
Logical Sectors Read: 113748216

SMART

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 109
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 25h+33m+53.089s
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 37753736040
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 113748216

6

I tried using “smartctl -l farm /dev/xxx” in my TrueNAS Core built in the shell environment but it doesn’t recognize the command:

“Invalid Argument to -l: farm”

I have been using 18TB Seagate EXOs drives and I’m curious if mine are also effected by the scam. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

7

The obvious difference that stands out to me is that I use Scale, while you are using Core. I assume that the tool in Core runs on an older version. According to the official smartmontools website https://www.smartmontools.org/, version 7.4 is available for FreeBSD, which, according to this Reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1idlh8r/tool_to_verify_seagate_drive_authenticity_by/, is necessary to check the FARM values. However, I’m not sure if this version is available in the TrueNAS Core version you are using. I believe you can check the version of smartctl with smartctl --version.

smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-linux-6.6.44-production+truenas] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

smartctl comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free
software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License; either
version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
See https://www.gnu.org for further details.

smartmontools release 7.4 dated 2023-08-01 at 10:59:45 UTC
smartmontools SVN rev 5530 dated 2023-08-01 at 11:00:21
smartmontools build host: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
smartmontools build with: C++11, GCC 12.2.0

This is my output for reference.

Someone in the Reddit post mentioned that they connected their hard drive to a Linux machine without mounting it and were able to read the FARM values that way - maybe that could be an option for you as well. Otherwise, just go through the Reddit replies; maybe someone with TrueNAS Core/FreeBSD has already found a solution.

8

That was very helpful. The latest Truenas Core version uses smartmontools 7.2 so that explains it.

Is it possible to use a VM that runs the command on a Linux based OS? In any case, I will keep my eyes open for a good solution for Core users. Cheers.

9

The VM would need to have full access to the drives, which pretty much defeats the purpose of a NAS. I would rather shut down the NAS, boot a LiveUSB distribution to read FARM data, and go back to regular duties.

10

TrueNAS Core 13.3-U1 has smartmontools 7.4

smartctl --version
smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE-p4 amd64]
11

Thank you for pointing this out…For some reason my Truenas Core built was stuck in 13.0 U6 when searching for the latest update in the WebUI and it would sometimes give security updates, so I just assumed it was the latest version ._.

I installed 13.3 manually and that did it; I have smartmontools 7.4 and I just read my FARM log on my drives.
Thankfully the FARM values are identical to my SMART values and they all show 12k hours which is right.
Thank you guys for helping out, I appreciate the support!

12

returned all the Exos Drives and purchased a Iron Wolf Version which seems brand new.

i’ve a question to TrueNas Scale implemented SMART Test. I ran the LONG Test but there is no summary page or the output is very limited. Is there a GUI option to see the more details?

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13

13.0 is the train on which CORE Enterprise runs.
13.3 is a “community only” curtesy version for those who wish to do a last update of their jails to FreeBSD 13.3/13.4; it is a manual update by design.