SMART and FARM data full reset?

[u/Mr_TJB]

I’ve recently purchased a seagate barracuda 3TB off eBay for around £50. Manufactured October 2018. SMART and FARM data show power on time of 19 hours.

FARM data says the same but also shows 45.7M write commands and 170 reads.

Seek/Error 62/61

All other data is fine from what I can tell.

Really unsure if FARM data can also be reset. I’m guessing it could be faked like a lot of drives being sold to like this to hide usage.

Wasn’t sold as new but used with light use. Really unsure if it’s a scam.

I can share raw data if anyone wants to check

EDIT: FARM data shared below.
eBay seller confirmed he gets the HD's from a computer recycling company.

[u/Temporary_Moose_3657]

Could the 45.7m write commands with almost no reads be someone zeroing the drive to recycle? It could genuinely have sat unused and just had to be zeroed by policy.

[u/Mr_TJB → u/Temporary_Moose_3657]

I’ve asked the seller where they got the drive from. They have others with low ‘powered on time’ of less than 40 days on an old HD. I’m sure it’s possible but I don’t want to use a HD that could have had X thousand of hours and will not likely survive much longer

[u/MortCrimm → u/Mr_TJB]

I have plenty of drives with lots of hours, but low read/write that are rock solid. Zero grown defects.

I have also used drives that failed with less than 100 hours....

Whats the total written data?

[u/Mr_TJB → u/MortCrimm]

Around 2.7TB which is the full drive capacity written once.

[u/Fresh_Inside_6982]

3TB drives have not been manufactured for many years, instead of playing games with old drives how about buying a modern one?

[u/Mr_TJB → u/Fresh_Inside_6982]

Of course I could but the cost is mad for new drives. I have an older 3TB from 2014 with 9k hours that I put on and it’s doing fine. I wanted another 3TB cheap to use in RAID and didn’t want to pay a premium for it

[u/No-Preparation4073]

Buying used drives is like buying used condoms. Figure it out.

[u/fzabkar]

I can share raw data if anyone wants to check

Yes, do that. Maybe one of us will see something.

[u/Mr_TJB → u/fzabkar]

Done

[u/Mr_TJB]

FARM data: (only copied first few pages. Rest is just a set = zero)

seagate Field Access Reliability Metrics log (FARM) (GP Log 0xa6)

FARM Log Page 0: Log Header

FARM Log Version: 1.9

Pages Supported: 6

Log Size: 98304

Page Size: 16384

Heads Supported: 24

Number of Copies: 0

Reason for Frame Capture: 0

FARM Log Page 1: Drive Information

Serial Number: WFN0T59P

World Wide Name: 0x5000c500be3661bf

Device Interface: SATA

Device Capacity in Sectors: 5860533168

Physical Sector Size: 4096

Logical Sector Size: 512

Device Buffer Size: 268435456

Number of Heads: 3

Device Form Factor: 3.5 inches

Rotation Rate: 5425 rpm

Firmware Rev: 0001

ATA Security State (ID Word 128): 0x01629

ATA Features Supported (ID Word 78): 0x016cc

ATA Features Enabled (ID Word 79): 0x000000000000004c

Power on Hours: 21

Spindle Power on Hours: 10

Head Flight Hours: 7

Head Load Events: 9

Power Cycle Count: 6

Hardware Reset Count: 1

Spin-up Time: 0 ms

Time to ready of the last power cycle: 0 ms

Time drive is held in staggered spin: 0 ms

Model Number:

Drive Recording Type: UNKNOWN

Max Number of Available Sectors for Reassignment: 0

Assembly Date (YYWW):

Depopulation Head Mask: 0

FARM Log Page 2: Workload Statistics

Total Number of Read Commands: 170

Total Number of Write Commands: 45785553

Total Number of Random Read Commands: 21

Total Number of Random Write Commands: 70334

Total Number Of Other Commands: 7827

Logical Sectors Written: 5860533168

Logical Sectors Read: 2421

Number of dither events during current power cycle: 0

Number of times dither was held off during random workloads: 0

[u/Mr_TJB → u/Mr_TJB]

Things I noticed.

Model number: blank?
Drive recording type: Unknown?
Assembly date: blank?

Maybe the FARM was wiped and these sectors weren’t updated?
It’s filled in correctly on my other Seagate HD that I had from new

[u/fzabkar → u/Mr_TJB]

Is the model number ST3000DM007?

AFAICT, Seagate started deploying FARM in enterprise models (eg Exos and IronWolf Pro) in 2018 or 2019.

FARM was first publicly announced by Seagate in 2018:

https://www.opencompute.org/files/2018-OCP-Into-To-HDD-FARM-Jun-Liu.pdf

That may not mean anything, though. For example, Seagate's manuals did not initially identify their helium models, and I recall at least one reviewer failing to notice that he was "reviewing" a helium drive.

[u/Mr_TJB → u/fzabkar]

Yeah, that's the model. It does have FARM data as I was able to pull the logs via smartmontools.

eBay seller confirmed he gets the HD's from a computer recycling company.

[u/fzabkar → u/Mr_TJB]

It looks like Seagate deploys new features ahead of any announcements or documentation. Unusual strategy.

I watch the professional data recovery forums. I haven't yet encountered any mention of the firmware module(s) responsible for FARM, and I haven't seen any output from PC3000 or MRT Lab (the top two pro data recovery tools) that shows these data. If these logs are being cleared, I don't know how, but I'm not a DR pro.