Last week, Heise.de published an extensive article that covered numerous purchases of problematic Seagate hard drives. A portion of the German publication's readership banded together, following an initial report of one individual's experience with—supposedly—new 14 TB Seagate Exos HDD units. Heise.de received fifty follow-up stories from its audience—a clear pattern emerged from this large volume of feedback. According to various bits of evidence, twelve retail locations were caught selling used/refurbished Seagate products—disappointed customers were led into believing that were acquiring "brand new" stock. Last week's report documented examples with visible physical wear and tear, and software diagnostics revealed prior operational usage—around 10,000 to 50,000 hours. Heise.de placed an order with the original source, but this transaction was canceled—the Seagate Exos 14 TB and 16 TB models were no longer in stock rotation.

Tom's Hardware kept tabs on the events unfolding in Germany, and contacted Seagate for comment. A freshly released article contains the storage specialist's official response, but the spokesperson did not disclose any information regarding root causes. The statement started with: "Seagate did not sell or distribute these fraudulent drives to resellers...We recommend that resellers only purchase drives from certified Seagate distribution partners to ensure that they purchase and sell only new or factory-recertified Seagate drives...hard drives that have been refurbished and factory-certified by Seagate and resold as part of the Seagate Drive Circularity Program can be identified by the green-bordered white hard drive label and the designation: Factory Recertified."Post-analysis, Tom's Hardware believes that: "Seagate's statement implies that these stores wouldn't have been implicated in selling fraudulent hard drives if they had obtained them from the storage company's certified partners. We can't know for sure if resellers were actually doing this, but if any retailers had acquired the fraudulent drives from non-certified sources, it might have been a big mistake...Curiously, Heise.de notes that of the dozen stores that its readers allegedly bought the fraudulent drives from, five were on the list of certified partners. That's not a great look, and it raises some questions about where those five retailers were getting their Seagate drives from, if not a reputable distributor or Seagate itself."