Interpreting S.M.A.R.T Results

[ensignx]

Hi,

 

i would like to get your opinion on the results of my HDDs. Little Background, i recently bought 2 used 4TB drives off ebay to upgrade my Diskstation (218play) as i was running out of Space on the existing 2x 2TB Drives (Raid 1) acting mostly as a Mediaserver for my TV in the past. Now im planning to build a diy NAS with 2 Pools, 2x 4TB and 2x2 TB.

 

Nows the question, are these Drives still good to use?

 

 

[tkitch]

they're starting to lose sectors.  That's the "reallocated Sectors Count" bit.

 

Uhhhh, why are the drives showing 0 hours?  That's not supposed to be a thing people can do to them...

 

There's a lot of sus going on in these pics.  I wouldn't trust em.

[manikyath]

i have questions... how are these at zero power on hours?

 

reallocated sectors is never a good sign, not that it is an immediate "danger", more so a signal that things are deteriorating and you should keep an eye on it.... BUUUT... together with the clearly fudged power on hours, i wouldnt trust these.

[Skipple]

11 minutes ago, ensignx said:

i recently bought 2 used 4TB drives off ebay

Given the combination of the clearly modified power on hour and the reallocated sector count, I would consider returning, if possible. Some folks advise never to purchase HDDs used, but I think that's a bit strict. I would err on the side of using a reputable used vendor, such as serverpartdeals.com. (i've used this company a few times and have been very happy with their support) 

[ensignx]

Yea, i found the 0 hours also irritating. They were properly packed (even sealed) and from a Dealer, but i guess that could have been a bad idea.

 

Thank you!

[OhYou_]

the person that sold these drives modified the drive firmware to remove the hours counters and effectively "wipe" the smart data. they usually add random data in but in this case they added random data to the re-allocated sectors which makes it show bad health. they also missed adding data in to the hours and pon count.

I would 100% not use these. not only are they old as, theyve been messed around with.

there is a bit of an art around buying used drives. it goes like this: buy bigger drives, buy ones that are guaranteed to only be a few years old because the model only just came out.

[Pusbucket]

6 hours ago, OhYou_ said:

there is a bit of an art around buying used drives. it goes like this: 

don't do it. 

@ensignx

yeah those are Enterprise class drives and probably lived in a server getting the crap hammered out of them 24/7 for a few years.

What is the manufacture date on them or have the labels been messed with?

[Pusbucket]

@ensignx

and by the way, bad sectors can't be repaired and it just continues to get worse.

use at your own risk.

[kokosnh]

Yes, can’t trust the data you put on it, as failing sektors can corrupt data ( as you not always can read them ), and can be problematic for raid. 

[Ryker Robb]

On 6/5/2025 at 12:35 PM, ensignx said:

Hi,

 

i would like to get your opinion on the results of my HDDs. Little Background, i recently bought 2 used 4TB drives off ebay to upgrade my Diskstation (218play) as i was running out of Space on the existing 2x 2TB Drives (Raid 1) acting mostly as a Mediaserver for my TV in the past. Now im planning to build a diy NAS with 2 Pools, 2x 4TB and 2x2 TB.

 

Nows the question, are these Drives still good to use?

 

 

Are these new drives? check the manufacture date on them. They could still be under warranty?

https://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-replacements/

[Pusbucket]

22 minutes ago, Ryker Robb said:

Are these new drives? check the manufacture date on them. They could still be under warranty?

https://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-replacements/

LOL, no, very old.

checked Seagate. no longer under warranty

 

[ensignx]

Yes, they´re old. As i now have them i will use them to play around make my first experience with a diy nas. So its not a complete loss

[OhioYJ]

On 6/5/2025 at 2:41 PM, tkitch said:

Uhhhh, why are the drives showing 0 hours?  That's not supposed to be a thing people can do to them...

Several sellers now have been caught resetting SMART data now.  

[DoranVuTye]

Personally I wouldn't rely on SMART data, as someone alluded to; SMART can be wiped using Seagate SeaTools. Best test to see would be to write a known pattern to it and read it back. 

Looks like these are drives branded with Seagate's SED, wouldn't be surprised if original customer wiped everything before off-loading.

There may be FARM log data still on the drive that has power-on hour value. Not sure if there's tools out there available that can wipe FARM logs.

 

 

[ensignx]

9 hours ago, DoranVuTye said:

Personally I wouldn't rely on SMART data, as someone alluded to; SMART can be wiped using Seagate SeaTools. Best test to see would be to write a known pattern to it and read it back. 

Looks like these are drives branded with Seagate's SED, wouldn't be surprised if original customer wiped everything before off-loading.

 

That was defintely done, the drive weren´t even initialised.

 

I now installed them in my diy NAS. Ran an long SMART Test on it (several hours), Truenas seems to see no trouble, there was no warning. The Bios has warned on Boot

Thats the result from TrueNAS, not sure what it means, but i will defintely do some writing and reading on the disks while testing.

[ensignx]

Update. downloaded seatools just out of curiosity. And surpise!

 

Where Crystal Disk gives a warning, the manufacture seems to be ok, with the SMART Data, all tests so far OK (long test running atm)

 

I´ve already decided to take the risk, but instead of Mirror, i will add another used Seagete 4 TB (SMART: OK) and go RAIDZ1 on TrueNAS and having more capacity and (more important) the possibilty to add drives later (and maybe replacing the actual drives).

 

But i will only use them for my less important mediafiles. Using the existing 2TB Mirror on my synology for the more important personal stuff (27years of digital existence). With probably moving and or updating to the Truenas as well in the future.

[kokosnh]

That doesn't change anything… they do not want to replace the drive, why would they tell you.

The drive is in the same condition as before, I would not use it, without dual full surface delay scans ( and only if there were good I would consider it ).