2

I have bought a Hitachi UltraStar 7K3000, a 3 TB internal drive. It was sold not in the box but in some kind of plastic parcel that was closed. Manufactured in Thailand, March 2012 - so it's 6 years old.

How can I check the health of it and if it was used and refurbished?

What I have done before asked the question:

  1. CrystalDiskInfo shows it's new and unused (zero/low values). Can this program deliver wrong information?

    CrystalDiskInfo HDD status

  2. Windows 7 chkdsk: also okay.

AmigoJack
  • 105
  • 1
  • 7
MikroDel
  • 143
  • 1
  • 1
  • 10
  • 2
    Seems like you've done all that anybody reasonable can/would do. – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 09:04
  • @barlop so the Information from CrystalDiskInfo is always true? Cannot be manipulated? – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 09:14
  • @barlop and also maybe it it possible to check the health condition of HDD with some additional tools. I mean it was stored for 6 years. – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 09:16
  • Mikro Hard drives can give off what is known as SMART data but a tool to check the health of a hard drive has probably checked that. Can it be manipulated? Well, a hard drive manufacturer would have that kind of knowledge, and if they went rogue then yes they could design a hard drive that gave fake SMART data or adjust an existing hard drive to, but no such situation has ever been reported to my knowledge. And Fortunately such an epidemic doesn't exist. And i've never hard of a single case. – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 09:18
  • Also a google for the existence of such a thing brings up nothing like it.. it brings up a fake anti-virus to fool idiot users into thinking that they can repair their hard drives by fixing the smart data. – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 09:20
  • @barlop Thank you for your information. Post it as an answer and I will accept it. The next who have the same question maybe will find it. And users, who has no knowledge are not idiots :) There are a lot of not good people who use it - but its other story :) – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 09:33
  • The fake anti-virus won't change smart data at all.. cos the author of it hasn't got a clue how to. And the users that use it are like somebody that believes that if a thermometer shows you have a high temperature and are ill, and you can change the reading of the thermometer eg by using some paint to show a different temperature, then you are well. – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 09:41
  • @barlop post your comments as an answer please – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 09:53
  • it's ok, i have enough rep ;-) A 'proper' answer to this question would be some have drive manufacturer saying how to and then setting off an epidemic! Apparently (very little known fact I just found), some older seagate/maxtor drives have a loophole https://askubuntu.com/questions/342976/how-to-reset-smart-results seagate/maxtor have since prevented that from happening but if somebody had a hard drive from that time then in theory it could be dodgy..(a video from 2016 shows a procedure/technique to), but it's unlikely a seller would do that. Like there aren't reports of it happening. – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 09:53
  • Interesting discussion: would anyone go to a lot of trouble to disguise a $60 drive (Amazon US price)? – AFH Apr 07 '18 at 10:28
  • @barlop its not about rep. Its about the information someone can find. That my steps were ok etc. This is the way this site will grow and help other users :) – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 10:40
  • @AFH it was the price I have pay for my HDD. More or less. – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 10:41
  • @AFH after I have bought it. I have seen a lot of negative information about this seller. Not on amazon, but on other sites. And the most people said, that hardware is used, but sold as new.. :) – MikroDel Apr 07 '18 at 10:43
  • @Mikro You can comment on reviews, and ask how they concluded that. e.g. did they conclude that cos it wasn't in the box, or cos there was stuff on there or what – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 13:10
  • @MikroDel You can post your own answer and accept that ..or leave no answer accepted, it doesn't matter.. I don't think the question is particularly useful to many people, and the answer is untechnical and uninteresting.. like oh seller isn't going to bother... it's too hard.. etc – barlop Apr 07 '18 at 13:17
  • Was it a sealed silver envelope? If so, that's standard for OEM drives, or drives not in an enclosure. – djsmiley2kStaysInside Apr 07 '18 at 18:53

5 Answers5

3

The most reliable way is to look at the SMART values, using whatever tool you prefer for your platform. SMART values include Power_On_Hours, which should tell you if the disk is used or not. It will also tell you a lot about the health of the disk.

Tinkering with the SMART values is not impossible, but difficult, and needs insider knowledge about the harddisk controller, which usual means working at the company that produces those harddisks.

Any company being able to tinker with those values will also be able to remove any other traces of refurbishing. So in that case, it's pretty hopeless, but such an amount of energy is usually not spent to dupe customers.

I don't know what kind of information CrystalDiskInfo shows, and you didn't tell us in the question, so I can't comment on that.

dirkt
  • 16,421
  • 3
  • 31
  • 37
1

You could also try to use forensic tools on the harddisk, to reveal if there was any content on it . Something like sleuthkit or the testdisk tool seems like a good place to start. (Edit: I meant the testdisk not the file tool, sorry)

TJ_Spark
  • 65
  • 8
1

Did it look something like the below? If so, this is the standard packaging for a hdd to be delivered in. I believe it's just an anti static packaging which is sealed.

enter image description here

djsmiley2kStaysInside
  • 6,643
  • 2
  • 31
  • 43
1

Some of these comments are wrong. It's 2023, from what I read in customer hard drive reviews for Amazon, sellers are able to reset the hours count back to zero even when there are damages to the outer hard drive meaning it's used. Some are reporting suspiciously low hours on the drive. The most alarming evidence is how many of the reviews report drives failing after a few months or even DOA. They are sending them out in antistatic bags, and most being sold are server pulls.

You have to do extended SMART tests on them and keep them powered on for 24 hours to weed out obvious failures. And bad blocks or reallocated means to take caution not always that it's going to fail immediately unless the count keeps climbing, crytaldiskinfo tells you, but I'm no expert, do more research

eksine
  • 11
  • 2
  • 3
    Welcome to SuperUser! How is this better than the other answers? – DarkDiamond Apr 17 '23 at 16:13
  • 1
    What do you mean? It's clearly a much better answer than any other previously, it introduces the reality that it's nowhere near "impossible "to tamper with the SMART data as said in their answers. The reality is used sellers are heinous and will cheat to trick people to make the sale .My response invoked more details by the person commenting after me. Try to read what is said and comprehend it before accusing people that there answers are unhelpful when it's actually extremely helpful. You just don't understand what is being said – eksine Apr 18 '23 at 19:24
1

You can not rely on the SMART data, and TBH it seems wrong / tampered with in this case. It's common practice to reset SMART on refurbished drives. Specialized hardware allows to do this in bulk.

But anyone can reset SMART on a Hitachi drive with freely available tools. Contrary to common belief this isn't complicated, in fact it is easy.

enter image description here

Since we can find Hitachi technology in other brands too it may work on for example Toshiba's too. This, after a secure erase can make the hard drive appear brand new.

enter image description here

I know for Seagate's it's possible via the terminal port and vendor specific commands that can be send via a standard terminal program.

Joep van Steen
  • 4,730
  • 1
  • 17
  • 34
  • True. I have found some seller also have done it. It can be rechecked with smartctl. Cause not the complete information is reseted. – MikroDel Apr 21 '23 at 20:15