What I said…
1 Like
It really is, “Don’t buy any brand drives from a dubious seller or if it’s too good to be true."
High capacity Western Digital drives were also snatched up by crypto miners, which then were discarded back into the market of used drives. It’s just that WD drives don’t have “FARM” where someone can check for tampering.
1 Like
For sure…
I’m sure regulars of this forum are aware of a U.S. seller of “recertified drives” that is reputable, has good prices, and good customer service.
I just don’t want as many people to know about them, since they tend to run out of supply fairly quickly.
2 Likes
To be fair. The fact that Seagate drives even have a FARM test that can’t be tampered with would support buying Seagate not avoiding it. I’m saying this as someone who has only ever bought WD until my most recent foray into the used market.
6 Likes
So what they tampering with is the information coming out of a default smartctl without the farm tag.
When specifying farm it goes into different levels and aggregate multiple sets is data together.
What’s being found is the default smartctl is being manipulated. The farm data or make that the aggregated farm output cannot.
But ye. The fact that farm is there on Seagate in this case is a positive.
G
1 Like
I am certain that given the time and desire, even the FARM data could be tampered with. But in reality, there are a lot of people buying these drives that don’t have a clues about this problem, not until the drive fails.
I am purchasing NVMe drives now, I am curious if any contain FARM type data as well. Guess I cat Google it.
1 Like
Warning re the nVME… there was stories while sick of 1, 2 and 4 TB nVME devices that was in actually fact like 32GB.
It would allow you to write the full volume, but what it did was over and over over write the same 32 GB. You only discovered it once you tried to access your data.
G
At the moment what they are doing is buy a single valid drive… to get a valid serial number and then make new stickers that they stick over the main.
My case I found the serial number is valid. If you scan the QR code then that’s valid… but if you manually went to the verify site and enter the serial number displayed under the we code then it comes back not valid.
G
Message me with the name… I promise I won’t share the secret…
3 Likes
“Buying from a reputable seller” will not save you.
Galaxus/Digitec is the biggest seller in Switzerland and they were also affected.
Supposedly this is a supply chain thing.
1 Like
you mean you adding farm check, you mean to your standard checks or to what ?
it would be great if the smart scan gave the option to have it emailed out after running, either standard version or say farm version.
G
What @joeschmuck should do in his next update to Multi-Report is to use the drive’s serial number to automatically issue an RMA request if the “hours” value in the FARM output contains a discrepancy. 
Bonus points: The RMA request is automatically signed with “Joe sent me!”
5 Likes
busy reading, learning about multi report… got some pages to read still. somewhere along the line I’m sure it will tell me how to install and use… having paged around the ui and not seen it I assume it’s command line driven.
G
Yes, I already have it working just fine in version 3.15 and I am trying to verify I have all the debug messages out of the script before I post it because someone will find one and say “what is this, what does it mean”. If the drive reports that it supports FARM data, even if it were not a Seagate drive (I do not limit this to specific drives, but none exist that I am aware of, yet) it would validate the data and toss out a Warning message and tell you what drive(s) are affected if the data does not match.
You also have the option to disable this feature which is really meant for the person who does find out they have a drive that was previously used, then they could disable the check and stop getting Warning messages.
Complaint time: I get a little deflated when someone sends me a dump and it has warnings as part of a “normal” run. Your script should report “All Good” every time unless a New problem occurs. If someone has this problem, reach out, I will help you adjust the config file so you have a normal email. This script does a hell of a lot and if you get a Warning message all the time, well does that mean you ignore a lot of the emails? Not good.
You joke but… Hum… I wonder, LOL, nope. 
EDIT: I also have Drive-Selftest V1.04 about to come out, I found one problem that has be wrapped around the axles to fix. Most people will not notice it but now that I see it, I can’t unsee it. And a new Hard Drive Troubleshooting Flow Chart. I will post that one today.
1 Like
Joe, sorry noob here… when I said to your standard checks was not aware of the utility you have, that everyone use, i implied to a set of checks you run for yourself on your own systems.
but i have been educated/enlightened 
will be doing some digging.
curious, is there somewhere in TrueNAS a database where the smart and farm data is kept, assume it’s associated with the unique drive serial number… (vs the /dev/sdX indicator as that can change.)
be interesting to see all this data, in a sort of table layout, for all the drives that is/was in a system. and things like their age, when they were added etc.
G
Ironwolf now too?
1 Like
I believe high capacity Western Digitals are also affected, but not as “known” because they cannot be exposed via FARM.
Chia farmers did not exclusively purchase Seagate HDDs.
Four years later, let’s check in on our Chia crypto pals…
From the wise @etorix in 2021:
Gold rush? Chia farming
Digging tools? Harddrives
Winners: HDD manufacturers
3 Likes
Not that I am aware of. The API also does not access the FARM data, as far as I am aware.
Check out Multi-Report, all that data is there, you may find you like it and didn’t know how you survived without it before. BUT! Read the instructions. The CRON command line is very specific for SCALE.
I build Multi-Report (back then called FreeNAS-Report when iXsystem took over NAS4Free and created FreeNAS 8.0) where it was designed to monitor if hard drives were being tested. There was an issue with FreeNAS back then where you may think your drives are being tested but actually some may not. FreeNAS-Report provided positive feedback to the community if your drives were tested or testing had stopped. And it has morphed into two scripts now. FreeNAS-Report is now maintained by @dak180, and I am now maintaining Multi-Report (a fork from FreeNAS-Report back in the day).
This is the only set of tools I use on my NAS daily. But it has a specific purpose: Monitor the drives for errors or discrepancies, report to the user any errors, backup the TrueNAS config file and Multi-Report config file. The drive errors and discrepancies seem to increase over time, examples: SMR Check and now I test for the Seagate drive SCAM issue. And I will post the new version shortly, I am trying to ensure it is all good to be posted. And I do run my beta versions on two NAS units, one CORE, one SCALE, so I practice what I preach.
2 Likes
THIS should be prominent in the mind of any prospective buyer…
It is NOT a matter of “avoiding Seagate”.
If the tampered drives come from Chia farms the only surprise is that it took so long to halt the operation and release the drives. The rate cratered within months of launch, never to recover.
3 Likes