Suppose the listing said “recertified.” SMART says 12 hours. The first self-test passes. I’d save all three, because the test result answers a different question from how many hours that disk has spent spinning.
We keep drive-arrival records at TechFuelHQ. There’s a field for the hours from SMART and a separate one for the FARM log on Seagate drives that expose it. No FARM log? Leave it blank. Writing down zero would turn a reading you never took into a claim the disk was new.
If you’ve sent a used disk back, what tipped the decision? I’d be interested in cases where something changed between unpacking it and finishing the first long test. No serial numbers needed.
Which attribute gave it away? Power-on hours against the date code on the label is the one I’d check first, since a drive built two years ago can’t carry five years of hours. And when badblocks did find bad blocks, was SMART still reporting the disk as healthy?