This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/selfhosted by /u/game_stailer94 on 2025-01-30 12:05:22+00:00.
I created this tool after reading the recent Heise article () about potentially fraudulent Seagate drives being sold as new. The tool leverages smartmontools to compare two different power-on hour counters in Seagate drives:
- Standard SMART Power-On Hours attribute
- Seagate's proprietary FARM log Power-On Hours
In legitimate new drives, these values should match (or have minimal difference). A significant discrepancy could indicate tampering or misrepresented usage history.
The tool is available as both a shell script and Docker container:
Technical details:
-
Requires smartmontools 7.4+ (Docker container recommended and includes this requirement)
-
Works with any Seagate drive (non-Seagate drives will be skipped as they lack FARM data)
-
Can check single drives or scan all connected drives
Docker is the recommended way to run this tool as:
-
It works regardless of your distribution's smartmontools version
-
Ensures consistent behavior across different systems
-
No need to install or manage dependencies
-
Pre-built container available and ready to use
For those who prefer direct installation, you'll need:
Since Heise is a German tech news site and the reported cases are primarily from European sellers, this might be more relevant for the European market. However, given the global nature of hardware sales, I thought it might be useful for the broader homelab/selfhosted community.
Disclosure: This post was formatted and refined by Claude (AI) with my guidance, as I wanted to ensure the information was presented clearly and engagingly.