In a follow-up to the ongoing Seagate hard disk drive fiasco, German outlet Heise.de has uncovered a new method fraudsters use to sell used Seagate drives as new by manipulating their Field Accessible Reliability Metrics (FARM) values. This makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to detect tampered devices.
Traditionally, buyers could identify used hard drives by comparing the operating hours reported in the SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data with those in the FARM logs. Fraudsters have altered the FARM logs' operating hours, making this comparison unreliable.
