Seagate EXOS Drives (and possibly others) Being Mis-sold – CHECK NOW

‘Used Seagate EXOS HDDs Missold as ‘New – Other Drives Implicated

Now would be a very good time to check any hard drives you’ve purchased in the last 12 to 24 months! Recent reports from popular German news outlet Heise have raised increased reports of refurbished and modified SMART-reported drives being sold as brand new, leading to large concerns of widespread ex-cryptocurrency-burnt drives being sold through trusted business and domestic retailers. Although the scope of the issue seems to be largely focused on Seagate Exos data center-class drives, because of the wide-ranging drives that were used in Chia cryptocurrency mining several years ago, there is an increased likelihood that other large-capacity and high-durability drives should be considered, thanks to the relative ease of firmware modifications and larger quantities of HDDs being resold off the back of 5 year durabilities lines being crossed by the original coin miners!

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The Missold Hard Drive Issue – TLDR

• Check Your HDDs – Reports indicate used Seagate Exos hard drives are being sold as new, particularly 12TB-18TB models.

• Firmware Manipulation – SMART data shows zero usage, but deeper FARM tests reveal 15,000-50,000 hours of prior use.

• Widespread Issue – Over 200 reports from buyers in Germany, Japan, Australia, and other regions, spanning multiple retailers.

• Crypto Mining Connection – Many affected drives likely came from Chia cryptocurrency farms (2018-2022) and re-entered the market fraudulently.

• Tampering in Supply Chain – Drives may have been repackaged and resold by wholesalers and distributors, bypassing Seagate’s official channels.

• Retailers & Seagate Respond – Some retailers are issuing refunds/exchanges. Seagate denies involvement and is investigating the supply chain breach.

• Verify Your Drives – Use SMART, FARM, Seatools, and warranty checkers to confirm if your drive is genuine. Report suspicious drives to Seagate and your retailer.

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What has been reported on the Seagate EXOS HDD Misselling

Earlier in the year, Heise reported that they had received dozens of reports from users who had purchased brand-new, enterprise-class Seagate Exos hard drives, only to find that when receiving the drives, they had scuffs and marks on them that suggested they were used—and used en masse. Further investigation of the hard drives using popular firmware tools initially showed that the drives’ SMART data was indicating little to no power-on usage. However, deeper investigation with deeper drive tools went on to reveal that the firmware had been manually adjusted to hide the tens of thousands of hours that these drives had already accrued in use.

Usage on drives has varied from between 15,000 hours and 50,000 hours, well over five years of deployment and well outside the warranty and workload rating on these drives in most cases. What is interesting though, is that retailers that have been impacted by this, and in fact a wide-ranging number of German retailers, have been highlighted as sources of these drives. However, reported issues span outside of Germany and include claims from purchases made in Japan, Australia, and other parts of Europe.

Fingers are initially being pointed at wholesalers, large-scale resellers, and distributors who supply the traditional retail and e-commerce websites that most users would be eligible to purchase from. Depending on the retailer, and several have already been highlighted in the now over 200 reports submitted to Heise, the returns and RMA process does differ from site to site, but this does appear to be a growing issue that most users will not even realize they have been hit by unless they take the time to investigate the usage data on their drives.

Primarily, Chia crypto farming has been highlighted as the origin of most of these drives, with huge quantities of large-capacity data center drives being purchased in 2018 to 2022, when this emerging and less GPU-centric form of cryptocurrency was being mined. Brands such as Seagate, WD, and Toshiba saw extraordinarily high sales numbers during this period for these drives, and equally, domestic users ended up being negatively impacted by supply shortages and price hikes. It seems that a lot of these drives that have either been abandoned from previously pursued cryptocurrency setups or just simply swapped out for ongoing farming have now made their way back into the supply chain under the guise of being regular, new, out-of-the-box drives!

The distribution channels, wholesalers, and affected e-commerce websites in order to ascertain how these drives have entered the supply chain and to what extent it has happened. They issued the following statement:

“We are taking this matter very seriously and are conducting a thorough investigation. As explained in the previous statement, Seagate did not sell or distribute these drives to retailers. We cannot provide details of the ongoing investigation, but we suspect that these drives are new products that Seagate sold to customers and were later resold by them on the used market. In this case, we believe that the drives were remarketed somewhere in the used market supply chain and resold as new. We recommend that retailers only purchase drives from certified Seagate distribution partners, as purchasing from certified Seagate distribution partners is the best way to ensure the authenticity of Seagate products for retailers and their customers.

Seagate has processes in place to investigate these types of cases, with teams working proactively with our vendors to take action where necessary. Our security team also regularly works with local authorities to take necessary action. Many investigations are initiated based on anonymous tips and reports from partners and customers. These measures are designed to protect Seagate partners and end customers in an increasingly global marketplace.

We encourage anyone who suspects they have received a used drive marketed as new to help with the investigation by reporting the incident to us directly at fraud@seagate.com . In addition, customers who have doubts about whether the products they purchased match the claims of the sellers can access our warranty checker tool . Suspicious drives and/or sellers can also be reported anonymously through our Ethics Hotline .

We are grateful for the trust our customers have placed in us and are determined to do everything possible to maintain that trust.” – Provided to Heise.de in response to the 200+ HDD Claims HERE 7/2/25

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Which Hard Drives are affected/reported?

Currently, the bulk of aggregate reporting of this is going through the Heise website, and a lot of the submissions have been done via their anonymous reporting link, so exact model IDs are hard to track down right now. However, the bulk of the reported mis-sold drives appear to be Seagate Exos drives ranging from 12TB to 18TB. As mentioned earlier, however, the original reporting suggests that other drives have been highlighted by users. Realistically, it’s pretty unlikely that only Exos drives are going to be impacted as such. A wide-ranging procurement took place during the peak of Chia cryptocurrency farming, and pretty much any moderately durable, high-capacity hard drive was changing hands quickly at that time. This all does seemingly indicate right now that a lot of these drives are being offloaded with their firmware modified by one or a handful of bad actors, who likely are sitting on high quantities of the same hard drives. However, it would not surprise me whatsoever if over the coming months and years, we see spikes on affected drives outside of the Seagate Exos data center series.

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How Can I Check If My Drives Were Mis-Sold as New?

Tools:

• Putty Download Tools HERE
• Seatools (PC/Linux) HERE
• Smartmontools HERE
• DriveDX for Mac HERE

There are multiple ways to check whether the hard drive inside your system, which you purchased as brand new, is actually new. However, the suitability of each tool will depend heavily on the system type and operating system your drive is running on. Seagate’s Seatools application allows you to check and validate multiple data points on your hard drives. However, it is only available as a Windows or Linux client, as well as a portable version. That means Mac users, or those less comfortable with command-line tools, may find it difficult to use—not to mention users who have multiple drives deployed in systems without a suitable GUI or command-line interface for validity checks. Below, I’ve broken down recommended tools and commands that you can use to verify your drives, their power-on hours, and other critical details.

How NAS users can Check and Verify the usage of the HDDs:

NAS users who suspect their drives may have been mis-sold as new can verify their SMART data and power-on hours using various tools. Most NAS operating systems, including Synology DSM, QNAP QTS, TrueNAS, and UnRAID, have built-in SMART monitoring tools within their storage manager or disk health sections. These tools provide essential SMART attributes, including Power-On Hours (POH), Reallocated Sectors, and Drive Temperature. However, in some cases, the SMART data may have been manipulated to show zero usage, making further verification necessary.

For deeper analysis, users can SSH into their NAS and install smartmontools, a command-line utility that provides detailed drive health reports. Running the command:

smartctl -a /dev/sdX

(where X is the drive identifier) will display all SMART attributes, including power-on hours. However, if the SMART data has been reset or manipulated, users can check the FARM (Field-Accessible Reliability Metrics) values for a more accurate picture of a drive’s actual usage history. To retrieve FARM values, NAS users can use:

smartctl -l farm /dev/sdX

This will reveal true power-on hours, drive usage patterns, and whether a drive has been extensively used before being reintroduced into the supply chain.

For those using QNAP or Synology NAS devices without direct access to smartmontools, Seagate’s Seatools (Windows/Linux) can be used by connecting the drives externally via a USB or SATA dock. Additionally, Seagate’s warranty checker tool allows users to verify if their drive was originally part of a multi-drive batch—a red flag that it may have been previously used in a server or data center environment.

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How Desktop Windows users can Check and Verify the usage of the HDDs:

Desktop users can verify the SMART information and power-on hours of their hard drives using several tools, including Smartmontools 7.4+, CrystalDiskInfo, and Seagate’s Seatools. The easiest method is using CrystalDiskInfo, a free GUI-based tool for Windows that displays critical SMART attributes, including Power-On Hours (POH), Reallocated Sectors, and Drive Health Status. However, if a drive has been tampered with, its SMART data may have been reset, making further verification necessary.

For deeper inspection, users can install Smartmontools 7.4 or later, which provides advanced diagnostics, including FARM (Field-Accessible Reliability Metrics) values, which can reveal the drive’s true runtime history. To check SMART data, open a command prompt (or terminal in Linux/macOS) and run:

smartctl -a /dev/sdX

(replacing X with the correct drive letter) to view detailed SMART attributes. If the reported power-on hours seem too low or suspiciously reset, users can retrieve FARM values by running:

smartctl -l farm /dev/sdX

This command will reveal the actual power-on hours and potential prior usage, even if the SMART data was modified.

Alternatively, Seagate’s Seatools (available for Windows and Linux) can run extended drive diagnostics, check SMART status, and validate warranty details. Users can also enter their drive’s serial number into Seagate’s warranty checker tool to confirm if the drive was originally sold as part of a batch, which may indicate prior data center or enterprise use.

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How Mac users can Check and Verify the usage of the HDDs:

Mac users can verify SMART data and power-on hours using Smartmontools 7.4+, Seagate’s Seatools for Linux (via a bootable drive), and third-party macOS utilities like DriveDx. Since macOS does not provide built-in SMART monitoring tools, users need to install Smartmontools via Homebrew by running:

brew install smartmontools

Once installed, users can check SMART attributes, including power-on hours (POH), by opening Terminal and running:

smartctl -a /dev/diskX

(replacing X with the correct disk identifier, which can be found using diskutil list). If the reported power-on hours appear suspiciously low, users can retrieve FARM (Field-Accessible Reliability Metrics) values by running:

smartctl -l farm /dev/diskX

This will reveal the true runtime history of the drive, even if the SMART data was manipulated to show zero or low usage.

For users who prefer a graphical interface, DriveDx is a third-party macOS tool that provides SMART data, health status, and power-on hours. However, DriveDx does not display FARM values, so Smartmontools remains the best option for deeper diagnostics.

Since Seagate’s Seatools is not available for macOS, users can create a bootable USB drive with a Linux live environment (such as Ubuntu), run Seatools from there, and check the drive’s SMART health and warranty status. Additionally, Mac users can enter their drive’s serial number into Seagate’s online warranty checker to confirm if the drive was originally part of a batch sale, which may indicate prior enterprise use.

It’s important to note that depending on your system, the directory paths and identifiers for your drives will vary significantly. So, even if 100 users all had the same hard drive model, if they deployed them in different NAS brands, desktop OSs, or even external enclosures, the directory paths and device names would be different. Keep that in mind.

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Are only Seagate EXOS Hard Drives Affected?

The Exos series drives appear to be taking the brunt of the reporting here. Realistically, if this flood of dubiously classified new drives is true, then the Exos series is definitely not going to be the only drives impacted by this. Moreover, Seagate was not the only hard drive manufacturer that was pumping out large-capacity hard drives at 12TB, 14TB, 16TB, and 18TB during the peak of this particular crypto-mining industry change! I think it is only now, thanks to the correlation of reports by Heise, that any kind of through-line has been found that specifically targets one hard drive brand or model series. At best, it really comes down to the bad actors who are modifying the firmware on these drives having the financial incentive to do so on a larger scale on a different hard drive series that they happen to have their hands on. The modification process of the onboard firmware and SMART data on Seagate drives is largely identical to that of the process on WD or Toshiba hard drives, and therefore, it really once again comes down to a question of correlating reports of these fake new drives all being collected together.

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How Has This Happened? How Did Used Hard Drives Enter the Supply Chain?

You might not know, but when you purchase a hard drive from your local retailer, that retailer almost certainly does not directly receive their stock of hard drives from the hard drive manufacturer in question. Ordinarily, hard drives, like a lot of electrical components, have a pre-established supply chain that retailers and e-commerce websites have to follow when selling their goods. With the exception of OEM companies who can buy from further up the chain and cloud/data centers like AWS and Google who can even buy right from the top, there are technically four layers in the supply chain of hard drives.

1. The first part of the supply chain is the hard drive manufacturer itself, in this case, Seagate Technology, which manufactures the hard drives at one of its production facilities in numerous locations around the world.
2. The next step in the supply chain is the Regional Distribution Centers (RDCs). These are the hubs where the hard drive brand sends its manufactured goods to be distributed to numerous smaller distribution centers across different countries.
3. The next step is wholesalers and resellers. Sometimes resellers can also act as direct-to-end-user sales points, but the lines can get blurry depending on the quantity or device in question. Nevertheless, the majority of electronics and consumables (including hard drives) cannot be sold directly from this point to an end user and instead need to be funnelled to the final step in the chain—retail shops.
4. Which brings us to the final step in the chain—traditional retail outlets on the high street and the e-commerce websites you choose to purchase from. These are the ones you’ll be most familiar with, and unfortunately, a lot of these are the same retailers that end users impacted by these mis-sold hard drives have as their initial point of contact.

The issue is that these used hard drives, which are being falsely marketed as new, have been introduced into the supply chain somewhere between steps two and four. Seagate has not had any involvement in their reintroduction into the supply chain. Somewhere along the line, these used drives were inserted into the system, and that is what Seagate is currently investigating. The retail outlet where an affected user purchased the drive has more than likely been completely unaware that they have been selling used drives as new. In most cases, these drives would have arrived in sealed retail packaging, and the retailers would have been reluctant to open up supposedly new products for testing, as doing so would immediately devalue the product in the eyes of their consumer and business buyer base.

Therefore, it is going to take time for Seagate to find the smoking gun and pinpoint which wholesaler, reseller, or distributor allowed these used drives to re-enter the supply chain.

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Is Selling Used/Refurbished Hard Drives Illegal?

The sale of used, data center-grade, refurbished, or officially recertified drives is completely legal. Although Seagate, WD, and Toshiba would probably prefer to see the used hard drive market disappear, selling used drives is not illegal.

Many online retailers, including Amazon and Newegg, actively sell recertified and renewed drives—just as easily as brand-new ones.

The problem here is that these were used drives that were fraudulently mis-sold as brand new—and that IS illegal. In short, this is fraud, and the people selling these drives could be pursued for damages if customers lose data due to these drives failing far sooner than expected. That’s why any drive that isn’t new is required to be labeled as recertified, refurbished, or renewed. This ensures clarity for the buyer when making a purchasing decision.

That said, some sellers intentionally make it hard to determine if a drive is refurbished. For example, a Seagate IronWolf 12TB hard drive sold on Amazon’s “previously owned” listings might clearly state that it’s used—but it won’t mention that it was originally manufactured in 2017, meaning it could be 8 years old and already have tens of thousands of hours of prior use. It wouldn’t be so bad if the manufacturing date was displayed at the top of the listing, but instead, it’s buried deep in the product details. Bottom line: Selling used drives is not illegal. Selling used drives under the guise of being brand new is fraud—and highly illegal.

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Is This Seagate’s Fault?

In all honesty, one could argue that Seagate is responsible for selling large volumes of high-capacity, data center-class hard drives to the original cryptocurrency farmers. However, this would be no different than selling the drives to any regular SMB, just a question of large-scale volume. Seagate is not responsible or in any way officially authorizing the reselling of its hard drives under the classification of new storage media. Additionally, the official partners that Seagate chooses to sell its goods through have almost certainly sold these drives with as much authentication between them and the distributors/resellers as possible. It could be argued that Seagate should personally step in at the supply chain level further down the chain to periodically check the health and condition of drives—much like a hard drive secret shopper—but that’s really about it. Right now, as long as Seagate commits to investigating how this occurred and acts upon what they find to ensure that mis-sold drives don’t enter the supply chain again, that’s about as far as I think this can go in terms of blaming Seagate. Realistically, we can’t lose sight of the fact that it is the fault of the bad actors who modified these hard drives in an effort to recover the original money spent on them before Chia farming collapsed. Wherever the entry point was that allowed these drives to re-enter the supply chain, that is what needs to be identified and stopped.

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What Should I Do if I Believe my HDD was Missold?

If you believe that the hard drive in your NAS, server, or storage system was mis-sold to you as a brand-new drive when in fact it was heavily used, you need to contact your point of sale immediately. Tools such as Seagate’s own warranty checker allow you to enter the serial number of your hard drive into their database checker. Regardless of whether your hard drive is still under warranty, it will still highlight whether this is an official drive or not. Additionally, if you purchased a single drive that was sold as new, but upon entering the details into the warranty checker on Seagate’s website shows that this drive was part of a larger batch, this would imply that the drive you purchased was originally included in a larger server system previously—not unlike how a food or drink product is labeled as part of a multipack and not for individual resale. If a single drive that you purchased as brand-new is listed as originally part of a multi-drive system, it is highly recommended that you contact your retailer and/or raise this with Seagate directly for further investigation.

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