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From the original heise.de article (https://www.heise.de/news/Betrug-mit-Seagate-Festplatten-Dutzende-Leser-melden-Verdachtsfaelle-10258657.html https://www.hei

by scrlk 2y ago

From the original heise.de article (https://www.heise.de/news/Betrug-mit-Seagate-Festplatten-Dutzende-Leser-melden-Verdachtsfaelle-10258657.html https://www.heise.de/news/Betrug-mit-Seagate-Festplatten-Dut...): > According to readers, various retailers supplied the hard drives, with Amazon, JB Computer, Mindfactory and Reichelt being mentioned in numerous cases. Others mentioned: Alternate, Böttcher, Büroshop 24, Galaxus, Jacob, Kosatec, Maingau and Proshop - some of which are on the list of official Seagate retailers. Given the number of affected retailers, I wonder if a distributor in Germany messed up somewhere.

Tepix 2y ago
"messed up"?
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  accidentally sent out refurbs marked as new to retailers to sell as new
- scrlk 2y ago
  My bet would be on someone in a warehouse mislabelling a pallet or something. Actual malice is a possibility, but it does seem odd to blow up an entire distribution business for some 16 TB HDDs, when HDDs aren't supply constrained at the moment. There were all sorts of shenanigans going on in 2020-21 when supply chains were disrupted (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-to-more-counterfeit-chips-and-devices/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-...).
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    >> It’s hard to imagine this is just a simple mixup, not just because so many retailers are apparently involved but also because they’ve all had their SMART stats reset, which would be very useful to someone trying to pretend a used drive is new.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - scrlk 2y ago
      If the distributor is dealing with new and refurb stock, I wouldn't be surprised if the refurb stock is being sourced from a more questionable supply chain. Just speculation on my part, but I'm going to guess that something like this happened: old HDDs were removed from a DC, sent to a recycler, and the recycler sold the HDDs to a sketchy refurbisher that wipes SMART data. A supplier buys from the refurbisher, and the distributor buys the refurbished HDDs (without doing proper due diligence on the supplier or verifying the stock they were receiving). There's a mix-up between new and refurbished stock in the distributor's warehouse, which then results in various retailers receiving these bad refurbished HDDs. Alternatively, the distributor went through unofficial/grey market channels to source these "new" HDDs. IMO, this veers into malice. No reputable distributor would gamble their reputation on sourcing new components via unofficial channels, as the risk of getting burned with counterfeits is high these days.
kuschku 2y ago
> messed up somewhere How do you "mess up" the smart hours accidentally?
- malfist 2y ago
  Judging by the hard drives you get from amazon, you mess up smart hours by forgetting to flash them to zeros. Hard drive fraud is rampant, to the point I'm hanging on to ancient 4TB HDDs because I don't want to reward someone for fraud.

by scrlk 2y ago

Tepix 2y ago

"messed up"?

stronglikedan 2y ago
accidentally sent out refurbs marked as new to retailers to sell as new
scrlk 2y ago
My bet would be on someone in a warehouse mislabelling a pallet or something. Actual malice is a possibility, but it does seem odd to blow up an entire distribution business for some 16 TB HDDs, when HDDs aren't supply constrained at the moment. There were all sorts of shenanigans going on in 2020-21 when supply chains were disrupted (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-to-more-counterfeit-chips-and-devices/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-...).
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  >> It’s hard to imagine this is just a simple mixup, not just because so many retailers are apparently involved but also because they’ve all had their SMART stats reset, which would be very useful to someone trying to pretend a used drive is new.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - scrlk 2y ago
    If the distributor is dealing with new and refurb stock, I wouldn't be surprised if the refurb stock is being sourced from a more questionable supply chain. Just speculation on my part, but I'm going to guess that something like this happened: old HDDs were removed from a DC, sent to a recycler, and the recycler sold the HDDs to a sketchy refurbisher that wipes SMART data. A supplier buys from the refurbisher, and the distributor buys the refurbished HDDs (without doing proper due diligence on the supplier or verifying the stock they were receiving). There's a mix-up between new and refurbished stock in the distributor's warehouse, which then results in various retailers receiving these bad refurbished HDDs. Alternatively, the distributor went through unofficial/grey market channels to source these "new" HDDs. IMO, this veers into malice. No reputable distributor would gamble their reputation on sourcing new components via unofficial channels, as the risk of getting burned with counterfeits is high these days.

kuschku 2y ago

> messed up somewhere How do you "mess up" the smart hours accidentally?

malfist 2y ago
Judging by the hard drives you get from amazon, you mess up smart hours by forgetting to flash them to zeros. Hard drive fraud is rampant, to the point I'm hanging on to ancient 4TB HDDs because I don't want to reward someone for fraud.