Old disks in new clothes: Fraud also with external hard disks
UnionSine hard disks are a bestseller on Amazon. An investigation shows: Some new enclosures contain old, used HDDs.
(Image: Aleksandr Grechanyuk / Shutterstock.com)
Fraudsters are selling old used hard disks as supposedly new external USB data carriers. As with scams involving normal hard disks, they go to great lengths to disguise their age.
Attingo Datenrettung GmbH points out the problem in a press release. It has tested several HD2510 series drives from the Chinese brand UnionSine. They are available via Amazon stores, with Amazon itself taking care of shipping. During the "Tech Week" promotion week, Amazon advertised the external hard disks – they are also prominently displayed in the store today with a "limited offer". Over 52,000 reviews with 4.5 stars testify to a high level of buying interest.
Old hardware hidden in new housings
The old hard drives come in new housings with a current production date printed on them. The runtime and start cycles are reset in the SMART diagnostic data. However, the fraud is immediately apparent when you open the data carrier housing.
This reveals that the production date of the hard disk is in some cases ten years ago. A SMART self-test reveals partial sector errors, problems with the positioning of the read/write head and registered vibrations. In case of doubt, the hard disk no longer works properly.
Attingo shows two examples with a ten-year-old 1 TByte hard disk from Western Digital and an eight-year-old 500 GByte model from Seagate. The data on these drives was not completely deleted and could be partially reconstructed. The researchers assume that all but a few megabytes of the data carriers had been completely written to.
Alte Festplatten in externen Gehäusen (2 Bilder)
Attingo Datenrettung GmbH
)Avoid small stores
c't has already uncovered large-scale fraud involving Seagate hard disks for desktop PCs, servers and NAS. Even today, we regularly receive emails from victims who usually buy from small dealers, such as Ebay. We recommend buying new hard disks – whether internal or external – from large, trustworthy hardware stores. We would avoid Ebay stores and the Amazon marketplace.
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(mma)
