There’s a great deal on a drive from Amazon Warehouse, but I’m a bit concerned about the quality of the drive and the fact I can’t return it.
Anybody have any experience buying something like this?
There’s a great deal on a drive from Amazon Warehouse, but I’m a bit concerned about the quality of the drive and the fact I can’t return it.
Anybody have any experience buying something like this?
How easy is it to wipe or fake SMART data?
My guess would be that it’s stored in some kind of non-volatile memory, i.e. EEPROM. Not sure if anyone ever tried that, but with the dedication of some hardware hackers that seems at least feasible. Reverse engineering / overriding the HDD’s firmware would be another approach to return fake or manipulated values.
I haven’t seen something like that in the wild so far. What I have seen are manipulated USB sticks though: advertising the wrong size (could be tested with h2testw) or worse.
I’ve bought used / refurbished (not sure which) with erased smart data. It being all zeros was a clear sign of erased / tampered info. After running badblocks some relocated sectors showed up.