Hard drives on backorder for two years as AI data centers trigger HDD shortage

It's rough out there and has become increasingly difficult to maintain our pace of storage deployment.

Further - and most concerning - is the pollution of the supply chain with refurbished/recertified stock being sold and marketed as "new".

One example:

https://kozubik.com/items/MaestroTechnology/

I strongly advise buyers to stick with trusted suppliers, avoid Amazon/ebay channels, and carefully vet your incoming stock with SMART tools to ensure you receive what you think you are ... especially for SSD parts.

Question for all of you more knowledgeble than I: can SMART data be tampered with? When I get, say, a refurbished Mac from Apple, I'm trusting Apple won't stoop to that. But a SSD vendor I've never heard of?