[CentOS] "Enterprise Class Hard Drive" - Scam Warning

Wed Oct 2 16:24:54 UTC 2013
Steve Brooks <steveb at mcs.st-and.ac.uk>

Hi All,

I know many of us here manage RAID on our Centos based servers so this may 
be of interest to us all.

I ordered three new "Enterprise hard drives" this month from a well known 
UK online retailer. The drives arrived as new in their anti-static 
packaging. Before using one of the drives in a mission critical hardware 
raid I checked the SMART attributes and was amazed at what I saw; see a 
few of the attributes listed below

   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  -   2600
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   097   000    Old_age   -   2106
  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   -     80
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   196   196   000    Old_age   -    398
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   180   180   000    Old_age   -   4077


So for a brand new packaged drive this was a bit of a surprise. "2106" 
power on hours, obviously should be zero for a new drive and "398" 
"Offline_Uncorrectable sectors" this is a well used and faulty drive. I 
contacted the (very well known) manufacturer of the drive and asked for 
information on the serial number. I was told the serial number of the 
drive was region specific to the USA and should not even be in the UK. I 
opened and tested the second and third drives with similar results. I was 
told two of the drives had already been returned under warranty and 
replaced with new drives. Wow... I was also told by the online retailer 
this is known as a grey import and is not that uncommon..

So it may be a good policy to check the SMART attributes of drives before 
deployment!

Cheers, Steve