I come to beg for wisdom.

I have a HDD that has 3 different serial numbers, and 2 different models, depending on where you read the data.
It is a WD 500 GB drive.

The label on the cover says that it is WD5000AAKX-001CA0 with a serial number of WCAVAXXXXXXX.

The sticker on the front of the drive says WMAVAXXXXXXX.

hdparm returns a model of WD5000AVVS-63H0B1 and a s/n of WCAUKXXXXXXX. None of the ending numbers are close to being the same.

The drive works, but this is the first time that I have seen anything like this. Would a drive that had been RMA'd come out like this? The drive has stickers over the left side and bottom cover screws that look original as does the label. The screws weren't especially tight as others have been. I don't do DR, but I have opened a few drives to look at the inside, and since things were goofy, I tested them, but didn't remove them.

Also, is the "internal" serial number stored in the firmware, is it on the PCB, or is it on the platters? Is this something that somebody hacked together? There is one additional sticker on the side of the drive that is a golden holograph with Chinese writing.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks T

It appears to be a fake.

Type the serial/model numbers into WD's warranty checker.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Picture?

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I checked all 3 serial numbers in the warranty checker and none came up, which makes me think that drives made 5 years ago may not be in the system.

What do you mean by a fake? Changing the label so that you can charge more for the drive? It is a 500GB drive and SMART data shows that it has run for over 2 years, and the drive isn't failing. The customer screwed with the partitions and lost access to some important files with no backup, so I restored the partitions after I cloned it. It was during that process that I noticed the S/N differences.

I'm going to try and upload some photos.

Any idea where the internal S/N is stored?

If there had been a PCB swap, would that change the S/N read by a computer?

Thanks for your help

The serial number is stored in module 02 in the System Area on the platters. It may also be stored in module 0D in flash memory on the PCB.

The PCB has a part number "2060-701590-000 REV A". The label has an R/N:771640 and WDT701640(B). Therefore I would have expected that the PCB p/n would be "2060-771640" or "2060-701640".

The model number on the label is "WD5000AAKX-001CA0". The DCX is "1T06DMRH5". AIUI, the DCX would suggest that the model number suffix should be "xxTDHxx" (eg 00TDHB0), not "001CA0".

WD5000AAKX-001CA0 is a 7200RPM drive. WD5000AVVS-63H0B1 is a 5400RPM drive.

There are several spelling errors on the label.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

To fzabkar,

Thank you for all the great info, I will parse through it so that I understand it better, but I get the difference in speed would make a difference in price point on the drive. Even though I looked at the label I missed everything you pointed out. I should have gotten out a comparable drive and compared the labels. Again, Thank you!


To Spildit,

I will work on getting the info you requested. I'm going to guess the program runs under Windows, so I will work on that. My youngest graduates this week, so it will be busy, but I will get it out as soon as possible.

Again, Thanks to all who replied. The level of knowledge on this board is amazing. T

My guess is that the actual guts are a 160GB AAJS.

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

Refurbished GEKKO

Definitely fake

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

That Chinese sticker looks suspect, too. But yeah, fake.
How was the drive purchased?

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

@Trkyhntr, one more thing you could check is the manufacturing date on the label. The component side of the PCB will have a WWYY date code on the artwork and YYWW/YWW date codes on the ICs (Year/Week). The dates should be reasonably close.

Identifying HDD IC markings - ST313021A case study:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=207

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Is there 160GB AAJS with these stickers?

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VEXUS Data Recovery

Sorry, thinking aaks, https://22.img.avito.st/640x480/2600358922.jpg

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

This unit was in a DVR that quit working (the DVR) that they needed the data from. It was sent to someone who didn't understand DVR's and then they formatted the drive from proprietary to NTFS. I was sent the drive to pull the video from it and put into a format so that it could be viewed.

I pulled 430 GB of raw video from the drive, so it is a 500GB drive. I knew that something was weird with it when I was cloning and imaging the drive, but not until I was reviewing the log files did I catch that the reported s/n was different from the label. That was why I chased the rabbit down this hole.

I had never heard of faking HDD's this way. I had seen the USB fakes on externals, but not this.

Thank you all for the help and the leads. At least now I can explain to them what is up.

T

Seems strange to fake a 500GB drive, with full working capacity. Also, why not just scan a label instead of going to the effort of making it, and screwing it up? Always amazed at the Storage scene!

7200 RPM drives sell for more than 5400 RPM ones.

The OP could verify the actual RPM with Victoria or HD Tune.

Measuring hard drive RPM:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=149

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I have written a tool for checking fake WD HDDs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=2153

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.