hdd in aliexpress

[cloudff7]

I bought a 2.5" HDD on Aliexpress, I know this drive is used but it shows few hours of use and good health in crystal diskinfo. What do the Chinese change in the HDD to mask hours of use and true health?
Do they also change or remove important HDD functions such as head parking and drive power management?

[OddOod]

Weirdly sinophobic way to phrase that but, okay.
Refurbishers will often swap out the control board on a drive, usually with reflashed firmware. This resets all the SMART data to default. The good ones will then run them on a test bench for a while to ensure the drive is alive and functional. 
The firmware image is often just yoinked from the manufacturer and should retain the drive serial number. This will have all the same standard goodies like power management and head parking. 
I've bought TONS of recert'd drives from serverpartdeals and they've been humming along fine. 

[YoungBlade]

Theoretically, a nefarious actor could do almost anything, but when actually considering the possibility of someone messing with the drive, you need to consider the cost/benefit analysis from their perspective and what the alternative explanations are.

 

On the scam side, to give you a drive with fake SMART data requires specialized equipment, although it is certainly possible to do. However, in this case, the person who did this, apparently, still sold it as a used drive. The entire advantage of wiping out the SMART data would be that you could claim the drive was new when it's not, so this is a strange way to scam someone, because you're not really doing it right.

 

Or it could be the result of a refurbishing. Perhaps the problem with the drive was that the controller died and the whole control board needed replacing. This would wipe out the SMART data, but since they're still selling it as used, rather than claiming it's new, it seems totally fair.

 

Or it could be a lightly used drive. You said it's a 2.5" HDD, which is typically found in laptops or other small systems. Perhaps it was installed in some device that sat on a store shelf for years and was later gutted for parts after it never sold. Or maybe someone got a new laptop and removed the HDD to sell it since they upgraded to an SSD.

 

To me, those latter explanations seem at least as plausible if not much more plausible than a scammer who decided that it was okay to wipe the SMART data, but for some reason drew the line at claiming the drive was new.

[Dedayog]

55 minutes ago, cloudff7 said:

I bought a 2.5" HDD on Aliexpress, I know this drive is used but it shows few hours of use and good health in crystal diskinfo. What do the Chinese change in the HDD to mask hours of use and true health?
Do they also change or remove important HDD functions such as head parking and drive power management?

A whole lot of overthinking there.

 

Since they sold it as used still, I can almost guarantee they didn't change anything like you're asking.

 

Why would anyone go thru the effort to change head parking or drive power on a HDD?  Just to fuck with you?

 

Edit:  I see your previous threads/questions.  You have a bit of a worry streak combined with an active imagination.  Rest assured you can use that HDD without issue.

[OhioYJ]

I would not trust smart data on a refurbished or used drive. If you are buying a used drive (refurbished, recertified, renewed, whatever fancy word you want to use for "used"), you already know you are taking a gamble. You are buying it for the deal.

 

Backups are your friend.

[cloudff7]

I have 5 2.5" HDDs some of my 2.5" HDDs are bought on aliexpress

Chinese firmware changed and SMART plus removes or modifies important functions, for example like head parking and steering power management??

[Dedayog]

12 minutes ago, cloudff7 said:

i have 5 hdds 2.5"some 1 my hdd 2.5" is buy in aliexpress

 

chinese altered firmware and SMART more remove ou modifier important functions example  such as head parking and drive power management??

What?

[Blue4130]

23 hours ago, cloudff7 said:

I have 5 2.5" HDDs some of my 2.5" HDDs are bought on aliexpress

Chinese firmware changed and SMART plus removes or modifies important functions, for example like head parking and steering power management??

No, they work just as normal.

[Tridefender]

On 12/3/2024 at 9:48 PM, cloudff7 said:

What do the Chinese change in the HDD to mask hours of use and true health?

It's possible, if the deal is too good to be true. They would rarely scam you if you paid the full price already.

 

On 12/3/2024 at 9:48 PM, cloudff7 said:

Do they also change or remove important HDD functions such as head parking and drive power management?

No, removing them means extra work and 0 profit, simple business logic eh?

[cloudff7]

Why wouldn't they change the original functions of the HDD firmware such as power management, head parking and other features?

[Blue4130]

8 minutes ago, cloudff7 said:

Why wouldn't they change the original functions of the HDD firmware such as power management, head parking and other features?

Because it does not serve a purpose. What would be the reason to change it? It doesn't earn them more money.

[Dedayog]

5 hours ago, cloudff7 said:

Why wouldn't they change the original functions of the HDD firmware such as power management, head parking and other features?

Because there is no benefit, since you paid for a drive at a reasonable price. 

 

Do you question car dealers?  Appliance sellers?

 

Are you dealing with an anxiety or OCD issue?  Or do you honestly believe that people fuck with things to screw people over just to do it?

 

I don't know how to explain how unreasonable your concern is. 

 

What drives this question?

 

Because I have never once in 51 years thought about this when buying drives.

[cloudff7]

changing the hours of use and health of the HDDs may be acceptable but changing functions in the HDD firmware such as power management, head parking and other features destabilizes the drive
I really don't know what they do in the firmware

[Dedayog]

4 minutes ago, cloudff7 said:

changing the hours of use and health of the HDDs may be acceptable but changing functions in the HDD firmware such as power management, head parking and other features destabilizes the drive
I really don't know what they do in the firmware

What are you asking?

 

Do you want to learn how this is done?

 

Or do you think they actually do it?

[Ryker Robb]

On 12/3/2024 at 4:27 PM, cloudff7 said:

I have 5 2.5" HDDs some of my 2.5" HDDs are bought on aliexpress

Chinese firmware changed and SMART plus removes or modifies important functions, for example like head parking and steering power management??

And how do you know this? You can always just change it back to what you want with a 3rd party program like hdat2.

[cloudff7]

Have any of you ever gotten a used hdd from aliexpress modified for a few hours of use and good health? In the tests it showed changes and they disabled or removed functions and features of the original firmware?

[Blue4130]

37 minutes ago, cloudff7 said:

Have any of you ever gotten a used hdd from aliexpress modified for a few hours of use and good health? In the tests it showed changes and they disabled or removed functions and features of the original firmware?

I have three hard drives from Ali sellers. I've been using one for 40,000 hours, one for 29,000 and one for 15,000 hours. I have no idea what the sellers did to them, but they have been reliable for me.

 

If the tests showed that they disabled or removed features, why would they even do it?

[Dedayog]

1 hour ago, cloudff7 said:

Have any of you ever gotten a used hdd from aliexpress modified for a few hours of use and good health? In the tests it showed changes and they disabled or removed functions and features of the original firmware?

New twist on your original question.

 

Why are you LOOKING for something to be wrong?  

[Ryker Robb]

2 hours ago, cloudff7 said:

Have any of you ever gotten a used hdd from aliexpress modified for a few hours of use and good health? In the tests it showed changes and they disabled or removed functions and features of the original firmware?

I have bought a refurb drive from amazon once. They had changed the drives id from st3500418as (seagate) to their own brand, and also reset power on hours and count to zero. I don't think they removed any other "functions" though, but i don't think that drive had much to begin with (i don't think the st3500418as supported apm or aam but i could be wrong).

[cloudff7]

change firmware disabling features power resources, parking is easy and simple like resetting hours of use, showing good health and modifying HDD ID2.5"? if show other ID not hdd hardware original model is not show in crystaldiskinfo?

[Ryker Robb]

1 hour ago, cloudff7 said:

change firmware disabling features power resources, parking is easy and simple like resetting hours of use, showing good health and modifying HDD ID2.5"? if show other ID not hdd hardware original model is not show in crystaldiskinfo?

This is a bit hard to understand. Resetting smart attributes like power on hours is a lot harder to do than changing apm (wdidle for older wd drives, which you can change easily in victoria), or aam. 

The st3500418as i bought would indeed show a different id in crystaldiskinfo if that's what you're asking.

[cloudff7]

i uses drives 2011-2013 Western Digital WDC WD10JPVX-08JC3T5, HGST APPLE HDD HTS541010A99E662

[cloudff7]

Do they change or disable some system settings (such as power management) within the firmware and does this affect the parking system?

my hdds Western Digital WDC WD10JPVX-08JC3T5, HGST APPLE HDD HTS541010A99E662 inside enclosure kesu 2530

[Ryker Robb]

5 hours ago, cloudff7 said:

Do they change or disable some system settings (such as power management) within the firmware and does this affect the parking system?

my hdds Western Digital WDC WD10JPVX-08JC3T5, HGST APPLE HDD HTS541010A99E662 inside enclosure kesu 2530

I don't think so. You can always check in crystaldiskinfo. Apm is the autoparking feature on a lot of drives (except a lot of older wd drives, which use wdidle).

[cloudff7]

APM is the power management functionality within the firmware that controls the parking of the heads in safe removal in Windows or power cut? If AliExpress sellers did not modify this functionality, would the entire parking system be intact? for my models above