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Angus H
Beware: heavily used drives reset, relabelled and sold as newer ones. I bought two 12TB Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives from Robert Electronics, which they had classed as "Grade A(USED) FULL TESTED 5 YEARS WARRANTY." I had expected to receive a drive that had been used for a little while, so was initially pleased to see the stickers on the drives indicated they had been manufactured in December 2024. I checked the serial numbers on the Seagate website and was surprised to see the drives were both out of warranty, which should've been valid until December 2029. I checked SMART and FARM data using Smartctl and found that while the SMART data indicated 0 usage on both drives (having been reset), the FARM data indicated that one drive had been online for more than 2.5 years and the other for more than four years. At time of writing it is eight months to the day since the 'manufacture date' on the stickers, so not only has the SMART data been reset, but the stickers have been replaced to give the impression the drives are much newer than they are. Concerningly, the FARM data also returns blanks in the 'Model Number' field, so I can't even be sure that these are the same model of drive as advertised. I'd encourage anyone who has bought a HDD from Robert Electronics to check your drives haven't been reset or re-labelled. I've emailed Robert Electronics with the Smartctl results and images of the drives and will update if I receive a response.
3 weeks ago
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ROBERT COMPUTER HARDWARE LTD has a 4.4 average rating from 18 reviews