How to check if a "New" hard drive is refurb using CrystalDiskInfo

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 26, 2009
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Hey does anyone know how to check if a hard drive is a refurb or not? I heard you can check by using a program called CrystalDiskInfo but can't figure out how to find that in the program, does anyone know per chance?
 
Unfortunately, if they had a clue you would never know. You can get a serial terminal into the drive controller and reset/erase the SMART information to show whatever you want it to. If the person didn't screw with the drive, you can get an idea by Power On Hours, errors etc.
 
mwroobel said:
Unfortunately, if they had a clue you would never know. You can get a serial terminal into the drive controller and reset/erase the SMART information to show whatever you want it to. If the person didn't screw with the drive, you can get an idea by Power On Hours, errors etc.
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Is the OP asking about a drive bought from an individual or a website?
 
mwroobel said:
Unfortunately, if they had a clue you would never know. You can get a serial terminal into the drive controller and reset/erase the SMART information to show whatever you want it to. If the person didn't screw with the drive, you can get an idea by Power On Hours, errors etc.
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Is SMART really that easy to falsify? damn.
 
TheSlySyl said:
Is SMART really that easy to falsify? damn.
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Yeah. The serial terminal drops you into a CLI for the controller on the drive. You have read and write access to all the paremeters and can set anything you want, or reset it and make it look like a virgin drive with 0 hours. It is 3 or 4 commands per drive to do it and takes about 5 seconds.
 
The label will usually have a date on it too, or check the serial for warranty like was said. SMART is too easy to reset.
 
mwroobel said:
Yeah. The serial terminal drops you into a CLI for the controller on the drive. You have read and write access to all the paremeters and can set anything you want, or reset it and make it look like a virgin drive with 0 hours. It is 3 or 4 commands per drive to do it and takes about 5 seconds.
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Which is why the OP was smart to ask his question.

My "remedy." Don't buy from Amazon. Buy from a reputable seller. And if possible, buy a drive with retail packaging.
 
As the others said SMART can't be trusted and Amazon is the worst place to buy anything you care about being legit. They don't separate inventory per seller so even if you buy from someone who had sent legit drives for distribution they could still be shipping you scam garbage a different vendor sent in for distribution.

I would check the warranty status through the manufacturer. Generally refurb drives or things like "new pulls" won't have a valid warranty.
 
rhkcommander959 said:
The label will usually have a date on it too, or check the serial for warranty like was said. SMART is too easy to reset.
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That is no guarantee either. We bought what we thought was a bulk pack of 20TB EXOS drives and they all had the same label and the same serial number. They were rebadged 10TB drives with fake firmware which identified as 20TB. We found out during burn in. Yes, this was of course from Amazon, who commingled drives (it was bought FROM Amazon.com listed as the seller) so thinking you bought it from a valid seller is no guarantee.
 
mwroobel said:
That is no guarantee either. We bought what we thought was a bulk pack of 20TB EXOS drives and they all had the same label and the same serial number. They were rebadged 10TB drives with fake firmware which identified as 20TB. We found out during burn in. Yes, this was of course from Amazon, who commingled drives (it was bought FROM Amazon.com listed as the seller) so thinking you bought it from a valid seller is no guarantee.
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Yet another example of why Amazon is a terrible place to buy from. Much as I am no longer thrilled with NewEgg, I still trust them more than your typical Amazon reseller. Unles the Newegg reseller is "First from ASIA" or some such. That's just an Amazon scam-seller in disguise.
 
I buy lots of stuff from Amazon, but only if they are the seller and shipper. The reason is I typically want it now and free 2 day shipping. If it seems like an out of this world deal then it isn't.
 
So there's a couple of things that will give you a telltale sign that it's a refurb--the drive label might be different, the screw holes won't be completely black and unused/unmarred, if there is a static bag, most manufacturers will have a label on the bag that matches the drive and the bag will have a non-resealable tear strip (even on manufacturer refurbs), the smart info would be over zero on poh and might have something in the error logs (I used the parted magic live cd from the ultimate boot cd to view smart and test drives), you might find the drive formatted. And this is all off the top of my head.

Bottom line, the 'marketplace' sites like amazon, ebay, et al are the places you'll find the scammers because they get away with it. You don't find refurbs or fakes through corporate retailers like provantage, cdw, pc connection, etc.
 
SamirD said:
Bottom line, the 'marketplace' sites like amazon, ebay, et al are the places you'll find the scammers because they get away with it. You don't find refurbs or fakes through corporate retailers like provantage, cdw, pc connection, etc.
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That is not true either. Provantage, Tech Data and CDW all sell as third party sellers through Newegg and Amazon and balance their inventory through them in some cases. We had a few drives over the years, purchased directly from Tech Data and CDW in this particular case where we received either refurbished drives or outright fakes and when Seagate and WDC traced the life cycle of the drives they traversed Amazon and/or Newegg at some point even though they were shipped directly from Tech Data and CDW (Not through Amazon or Newegg) to us.

Buying from a Brick and Mortar dealer isn't any guarantee either. About 2 years ago when I was in Vegas I purchased a half dozen 14TB retail boxed WDC drives from Best Buy because I had to replace a drive shelf immediately and couldn't wait until next day delivery. They all were shrinkwrapped and looked factory fresh. 5 of them were. One was a 512MB IDE samsung drive with a WDC label slapped on top. People suck! Just buy from someone with a good return policy just in case.
 
mwroobel said:
That is not true either. Provantage, Tech Data and CDW all sell as third party sellers through Newegg and Amazon and balance their inventory through them in some cases. We had a few drives over the years, purchased directly from Tech Data and CDW in this particular case where we received either refurbished drives or outright fakes and when Seagate and WDC traced the life cycle of the drives they traversed Amazon and/or Newegg at some point even though they were shipped directly from Tech Data and CDW (Not through Amazon or Newegg) to us.

Buying from a Brick and Mortar dealer isn't any guarantee either. About 2 years ago when I was in Vegas I purchased a half dozen 14TB retail boxed WDC drives from Best Buy because I had to replace a drive shelf immediately and couldn't wait until next day delivery. They all were shrinkwrapped and looked factory fresh. 5 of them were. One was a 512MB IDE samsung drive with a WDC label slapped on top. People suck! Just buy from someone with a good return policy just in case.
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I've been buying from Provantage for almost a decade and CDW nearly 30 years and have found that if it's new and directly from their site, it's the real deal. Their open box items have a chance for foul play, but I've not had that be an issue either. And fwiw, I've never seen provantage or cdw on any marketplace sites, so those are probably fake accounts.

Tech Data is no Ingram Micro. ;)
thats-all-i-have-to-say-about-that.jpg


The thing about Brick and Mortar that keeps them in check is that they have to actually deal with an angry customer face-to-face. And that negative experience is so bad that they have a lot of checks and balances in place to make sure that they don't have to deal with this more than necessary. This is completely different than online, where they give 2Fs until sales drop, then only the minimal Fs are given to restore sales. Not to say there aren't places where B&M sucks, but then then the market will speak and they'll be gone.

And there will always be cheaters on both sides of the fence and the best position is to not be one on either side of the fence. :D
 
SamirD said:
I've been buying from Provantage for almost a decade and CDW nearly 30 years and have found that if it's new and directly from their site, it's the real deal. Their open box items have a chance for foul play, but I've not had that be an issue either. And fwiw, I've never seen provantage or cdw on any marketplace sites, so those are probably fake accounts.

Tech Data is no Ingram Micro. ;)
View attachment 564545

The thing about Brick and Mortar that keeps them in check is that they have to actually deal with an angry customer face-to-face. And that negative experience is so bad that they have a lot of checks and balances in place to make sure that they don't have to deal with this more than necessary. This is completely different than online, where they give 2Fs until sales drop, then only the minimal Fs are given to restore sales. Not to say there aren't places where B&M sucks, but then then the market will speak and they'll be gone.

And there will always be cheaters on both sides of the fence and the best position is to not be one on either side of the fence. :D
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What SamirD said is based on his experience, and I would trust that, with his rep based on his other posts.

I once had a different experience, with long-gone and not lamented B&M Fry's Electronics. They were famous for reshrinkwrapping customer returns. Once I bought an expensive sound card for my kids' system, only it was an el cheapo LAN card. So I went back to Frys and they treated ME as though I was the scammer. It took several trips to the store to finally get an exchange for the real product, which was all I wanted. Did I mention that this was right after my wife passed away after a long illness, and the kids and I were in turmoil. Frys was another stressor I did not need
 
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philb2 said:
What SamirD said is based on his experience, and I would trust that, with his rep based on his other posts.

I once had a different experience, with long-gone and not lamented B&M Fry's Electronics. They were famous for reshrinkwrapping customer returns. ONce I bought an expensive sound card for my kids' system, only it was an el cheapo LAN card. So I went back to Frys and they treated ME as thought I was the scammer. It took several trips to the store to finally get an exchange for the real product, which was all I wanted. Did I mention that this was right after my wife passed away after a long illness, and the kids and I were in turmoil. Frys was another stressor I did not need
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Thank you for the vote of confidence! I have bought nearly 100 drives over the decades and have been around long enough to see others' horror stories.

And your situation illustrates my point completely--Fry's is no longer in business. I guess this type of thing happened to enough people that they 'voted with their wallets'. (y)
 
SamirD said:
And your situation illustrates my point completely--Fry's is no longer in business. I guess this type of thing happened to enough people that they 'voted with their wallets'. (y)
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Yah. Guy I used to work with had a sales job with Frys during a period of unemployment. Absolutely hated it, because of the way that Fry's management treated their employees. When Fry's closed up everyone said that they could not compete with web stores. But Micro Center is still in business.
 
SamirD said:
And your situation illustrates my point completely--Fry's is no longer in business. I guess this type of thing happened to enough people that they 'voted with their wallets'. (y)
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I think Fry's had other problems, like their stores were three sizes too big and when their purchasing manager got fired/jailed for embezzling /corruption to support his gambling habit, they no longer had the same supply of good deals to make up for the customer service. Then when they tried to switch to a consignment model and none of their vendors would play ball, that was the end. There were internet rumors that one of the Fry brothers had credit troubles that impacted the company credit too, but I can't find anything to back that up. They owned at least some of the real estate for the stores, and maybe could have kept themselves alive if they found tenants. Anyway, I miss the olden days of getting a shitty ECS board and a cheap CPU for peanuts, and usually the board would work fine once you got the bios updated. It's not the same when I can only go to Microcenter on vacation, and it's $125 for the cheapest combo, and the board is decent. No challenge builds are no fun; but then I'm the kind of PC gamer that liked the config.sys meta game more than many of the games that I got to run.
 
toast0 said:
I think Fry's had other problems, like their stores were three sizes too big and when their purchasing manager got fired/jailed for embezzling /corruption to support his gambling habit, they no longer had the same supply of good deals to make up for the customer service. Then when they tried to switch to a consignment model and none of their vendors would play ball, that was the end. There were internet rumors that one of the Fry brothers had credit troubles that impacted the company credit too, but I can't find anything to back that up. They owned at least some of the real estate for the stores, and maybe could have kept themselves alive if they found tenants. Anyway, I miss the olden days of getting a shitty ECS board and a cheap CPU for peanuts, and usually the board would work fine once you got the bios updated. It's not the same when I can only go to Microcenter on vacation, and it's $125 for the cheapest combo, and the board is decent. No challenge builds are no fun; but then I'm the kind of PC gamer that liked the config.sys meta game more than many of the games that I got to run.
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No doubt they had "problems." Just go into the store in the years just before they closed, and you could see the empty shelves, the unhelpful or ill informed staff, the big row of cash registers mostly unstaffed.

I didn't know about the purchasing manager, but that doesn't surprise me. Sad in a way, because there was a store maybe 15 minutes drive from my house. Loved the inventory and the wall panels with samples of all the motherboards, RAM, drives, etc. I was a very loyal customer, until I wasn't.
 
philb2 said:
No doubt they had "problems." Just go into the store in the years just before they closed, and you could see the empty shelves, the unhelpful or ill informed staff, the big row of cash registers mostly unstaffed.

I didn't know about the purchasing manager, but that doesn't surprise me. Sad in a way, because there was a store maybe 15 minutes drive from my house. Loved the inventory and the wall panels with samples of all the motherboards, RAM, drives, etc. I was a very loyal customer, until I wasn't.
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Fry’s died the same deaths as Comp-USA it just took longer. First they ran out of capital to stock the shelves, then pulled a Radio Shack and just pushed cellphones and service contracts and then just faded away.
 
mwroobel said:
Fry’s died the same deaths as Comp-USA it just took longer. First they ran out of capital to stock the shelves, then pulled a Radio Shack and just pushed cellphones and service contracts and then just faded away.
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So what explains the continued success of MicroCenter?
 
Microcen
philb2 said:
So what explains the continued success of MicroCenter?
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MicroCenter is at least (at the current time) much better capitalized (lots of stock and more importantly the current models), has good relationships with their distributors and manufacturers (they pay their bills) and has a more national footprint than Fry's (which was mostly West Coast) and unlike Fry's didn't have different prices for in-store and online. (Basically Fry's 25 years ago) lol they also didn't have a VP who embezzeled 65 million dollars to pay off gambling losses just as Covid was hitting.
 
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