[ale] Can you run back the odometer on a SMARTD drive?

[Neal Rhodes]

I got a supposedly refurbished HP desktop from Tiger Direct.

Various flavors of SMARTD utilities on Windows and Centos reported very low hours on the drive, like in the range of 5 hours.

Does this mean that the refurb operation put in a new disk drive, or is there a way of re-initializing the SMARTD data?

(or, do the drive manufacturers refurb their own drives and send out used drives with zero hours on them? )

Neal

[Jim Kinney]

the data _can_ be altered but likely only by the drive maker.

Most likely the refurb group put in a new drive.

Drive makers do refurb drives by replacing the board. That will reset the SMART data.

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--
--
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
- 2011 Noam Chomsky

http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/

[Richard Bronosky]

Likely story. Neal's next message: "Great prices on like new hard drives."
;-)

[Neal Rhodes]

I should be more accurate.   TigerDirect represented the machine as an "off-lease".   They did not explicitly say refurbished.

The other surprise is that it looked to me like it came with HP packaging.     Most of their off-leases are in generic packaging.



Neal

[Jim Kinney]

cool! Off-lease is NOT refurbished. so it may be a vary new system that was just barely used before the company went under or never reissued it (hot spare on a shelf for (l)user).