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I want to detect if a hard drive's SMART data has been reset, e.g. by an unscrupulous vendor selling refurbished drives as new. Google shows page after page of results about techniques and tools for resetting SMART data, but none about how to detect whether this has happened. I'm hoping there's a way to do this - if not with absolute certainly at least with a heuristic.

Sanford Rockowitz
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Perhaps it is an option for you to use the serial number to look up the age of the HDD's on a vendor lookup page. Western Digital does offer such an option on: https://support.wdc.com/warranty/warrantystatus.aspx

I am uncertain if all HDD's manufacturers support this.

  • Using the manufacturer serial number as you suggest would only show when the drive was manufactured. That information is printed on the drive label. The question I'm interested is the number hours used, error reports, etc. Put another way, has the drive been sitting on shelf for 5 years, in which case it can legitimately be sold as new, or was it actually put into use, in which case it is used. The SMART data will show this. Some unscrupulous vendors attempt to reset the SMART data so the drive appears to be new when it is not. – Sanford Rockowitz Jan 04 '20 at 03:39