How do I check if hard drive bad sectors have been hidden?

[Kevin Chen]

Hello everyone,

I recently purchased several used Seagate Exos enterprise HDDs. Although SMART appears normal, I suspect the seller may have used professional repair tools to hide previous bad sectors or modify SMART information. I have a few questions:
1. Is it possible to hide evidence of bad sectors on Seagate Exos drives?
2. Can tools such as MRT or PC-3000 modify SMART attributes or other drive information?
3. Besides SMART, what is the most reliable way to determine whether a drive has been manipulated?
4. Are there any logs, firmware records, G-list/P-list, self-test history, or other information that cannot be easily modified? I am not asking how to modify drives. I only want to know how professionals verify that a used enterprise HDD is genuine and has not been manipulated.

Thank you very much.

[fzabkar]

Have you examined the FARM logs?

I'm not a pro, but I would think that it may not be possible to determine whether grown defects have been transferred to the primary defect list. That's what is normally done when a drive is refurbished.