Aliexpress 2.5 HDD: Altered Usage Hours & Health Indicators Explained

I bought a 2.5" HDD on Aliexpress, I know this drive is used but it shows few hours of use and good health in CrystalDiskInfo. What do the Chinese change in the HDD to mask hours of use and true health?

Do they also change or remove important HDD functions such as head parking and drive power management?

Hi.
Modern HDDs are equipped with SMART technology, which is responsible for monitoring and storing crucial drive parameters, including power-on time. Theoretically, these values are stored in a place not accessible to the user and cannot be erased or changed manually. So this should not be modified by the user, but there are ways to do this, and all values stored by SMART can be initialised to factory defaults (including power-on time, power-on count, pending sectors, g-sensor and everything else).

This way, the disk is shown with excellent health in SMART reporting programs such as Crystal Disk Info.

If you bought such a drive, you should definitely check its entire surface to see if this disk is usable at all. It may be a piece of junk, or it may be good; it's a lottery.

AAM and APM parameters can be modified on some drives, but most likely they are kept default because there is no need to touch them when "factory" resetting SMART values.

Do the Chinese from aliexpress only change the SMART or do they remove and change HDD 2.5" firmware functions such as power management and head parking?

One will dig deeper, the other will just reset SMART.
This is a question for the Chinese, whether they modify the software to a greater extent or not.

The solution is not to buy devices from questionable sources.

Tell us better what you mean.
What question should we answer exactly?
Why are you so interested in head parking and power management?
Until the disk receives the "sleep" command, it will wait for commands in the ready state - it will work.

From your experience with HDDs, do the Chinese modify or remove the HDD firmware functions such as power management and head parking in addition to SMART to show few hours of use and good health for used HDDs?

What is the sleep command? Is it related to the Windows function of ejecting "safely remove hardware" and parked heads of 2.5" HDDs inside USB enclosure cases?

up ???

gamemaniaco1987 wrote:

From your experience with HDDs, do the Chinese modify or remove the HDD firmware functions such as power management and head parking in addition to SMART to show few hours of use and good health for used HDDs?

.
From my the don't because it is economically unjustified and not needed for drive to spin up and get detected. If they sell scrap as refurbished disks or even new, they will not waste too much time per unit to make it appear ok, but, as said earlier:

Łukasz_W wrote:

This is a question for the Chinese, whether they modify the software to a greater extent or not.

.

gamemaniaco1987 wrote:

What is the sleep command? Is it related to the Windows function of ejecting "safely remove hardware" and parked heads of 2.5" HDDs inside USB enclosure cases?

I believe You had that question answered in one of Your other threads.

alteredSMART ok

Do they change or disable some system settings (such as power management) within the firmware and does this affect the parking system?

my hdds Western Digital WDC WD10JPVX-08JC3T5, HGST APPLE HDD HTS541010A99E662 inside enclosure kesu 2530

This is becoming boring. You got a bunch of answers to this question and you still ask the same. The answers are the same. Do You expect another answer if You post the same question a dozen times?

>>21361546 Thanks for the answers, friends. I just want to understand how this manipulation works. In the answers, I see that they change SMART, to show few hours of use and good health, but if they change SMART, at the same time, the energy settings within the firmware will also be changed, and this harms and disables or modifies the head parking system.

Reset SMART clear all parameters, no one sets parameters individually, I have never encountered this.
Similarly, I have never encountered anyone changing operating parameters related to energy saving or heads parking functions.
If the disk has mechanical problems, this will not change anything.

Do a full surface scan with MHDD or Victoria and you'll know if the drive has problems. And in the future, buy devices from trusted sources.

>>21361624 I used HD Tune Full Scan surface no errors

on the two 2.5" HDD models mentioned that I bought on Aliexpress. After I read and saw that they change usage hours and show good health on the crystal disk, I wondered if they would change important features of the 2.5" HDD such as power management and parking of the heads when ejecting in Windows.

gamemaniaco1987 wrote:

I used HD Tune Full Scan surface no errors

.
You were recommended two programs that we recommend using for this purpose and HD Tune was not there. Why do you create topics if you neither follow the recommendations nor respect our answers?

the test I carried out a few months ago before the answers were posted, the HDD Tune is not fine ok?

on the two 2.5" HDD models mentioned that I bought on Aliexpress. After I read and saw that they change usage hours and show good health on the crystal disk, I wondered if they would change important features of the 2.5" HDD such as power management and parking of the heads when ejecting in Windows.

>>21361746 Aliexpress sellers changing power management settings, parking and other features within the 2.5" HDD firmware is easy to manipulate like resetting SMART?

No, as said earlier this is not easy. Try to find how to do it and you will know.

The Chinese from Aliexpress change SMART to show a few hours of use and good health in CrystalDiskInfo, all other parameters are also reset. Does this procedure access and modify within the firmware in the power management and parking system? Have any of you analysed a used 2.5" HDD from Aliexpress?

You are asking the same again and again. All of Your questions that could be answered have already been answered. Read the whole thread again if You missed them and You will find these answers. What's the point of asking the same questions over and over again?

@gamemaniaco1987
You buy something from a Chinese and then ask us what they were tinkering with?
Ask the Chinese what they did there!

>>21363605 Chinese will never tell the truth

Have any of you had access to a 2.5" HDD from AliExpress and analyzed the modifications made to its firmware?

Don't buy hard drives from Aliexpress and that's it. You've already got all the answers, you can close this thread.

gamemaniaco1987 wrote:

Chinese will never tell the truth

.
But did you find out about it now or did you know about it before?
If you found out now, you have learned your lesson.
And if you knew in advance and still knowingly left them money, it's your own fault.

Does the Aliexpress seller have any influence on the HDD modifications? Example: I bought an external HDD from the KESU brand (enclosure case Kesu 2530 2.5" HDD models Western Digital WD10JPVX-08JC3T5 and HGST APPLE HDD HTS541010A99E662) I wonder if all sellers buy the HDD from the same person and resell it with the brand's USB case.

Again - this is not a question for us.
In what language should we write so that you understand that SMART is completely erased, no one sets individual working hours, just zeros its values and that interference in the software that you are talking about does not pay off for anyone.

gamemaniaco1987 wrote:

I wonder if all sellers buy the HDD from the same person and resell it with the brand's USB case.

.
I don't understand this at all - anyone can sell a drive in an external casing.
The source of these devices can be good or bad, what do you expect from us?

Tell us, what would be the point of modifying the head parking function that you are talking about all the time from the vendor's point of view?
What would cause this?

An HDD drive is a mechanical device, if it is degraded, both on the head side and on the surface, then changing the parking function does not change anything at all.

>>21368954 I speak Portuguese

but I use the translator

yes I know they change SMART

does the Chinese need to change the power management and parking system of the 2.5" HDD to hide errors and defects in the drive or force the purchase of another HDD??

is the difficulty to reset SMART the same as to change, disable or remove original functions of the 2.5" HDD?

Report:
If the author has any doubts, they should ask the seller. The questions asked here don't help others in any way, and we are not able to answer them with 100% certainty due to their nature - these are not strictly technical questions but merely presumed suspicions, which cannot be verified in any way anyway.