I recently purchased a Seagate Exos X16 from Amazon. To be specific it was this one for £188.90. I was cautious that the vendor was not Seagate and was a third party seller for a reduced rate, so I thought it best to check the smart values and serial number after it arrived as usually this means the drive is of questionable origin.

At this price point I knew I was taking a bit of a gamble (and S.M.A.R.T data can be overwritten I think) but the data would hopefully provide some insight into what I had actually purchased. £188.90 is significantly below the £214 buy box, but it is not impossible that the drive didn’t come from Seagate as sold.

When it arrived I took a photo. Packing was clearly custom and the ESD bag was not OEM. Oh well, lets see what smartctl says.

Running the disk drive through Seagates warranty checker, the drive is likely from one of their storage appliances. This makes warranty replacement not possible except when done through the Amazon seller’s original equipment.

I also plugged the drive into my Proxmox NAS to see if the drive had been running at all and given the S.M.A.R.T attribute (240 0xF0 “Head Flying Hours”) it looks like the drive has never been started as it has only been up about the time it took me to run the command after connecting the drive.

[email protected]:~# smartctl -a /dev/sdc
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.15.136-1-pve] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Exos X16
Device Model:     ST16000NM001G-2KK103
Serial Number:    ZL2EPPX1
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0c9385ca4
Firmware Version: SN03
User Capacity:    16,000,900,661,248 bytes [16.0 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Form Factor:      3.5 inches
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-4 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.3, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Fri Mar  8 14:55:15 2024 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever 
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:                (  575) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:        (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (1485) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x70bd) SCT Status supported.
                                        SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
                                        SCT Feature Control supported.
                                        SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   044    Pre-fail  Always       -       2624
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   099   099   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       1
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   100   253   045    Pre-fail  Always       -       447
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       1
 18 Head_Health             0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   078   063   040    Old_age   Always       -       22 (Min/Max 21/22)
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   022   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       22 (0 21 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Pressure_Limit          0x0023   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0h+01m+14.651s
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       2624

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

[email protected]:~# 

Based on this I was sold a 5 year warranty but I am not able to claim it should something happen to the drive. As I only use it for infrequent backup I will take on the risk.