Seagate and WD OEM

I've got a bunch of old Seagate and WD drives. Is there any way I can determine if they're OEM drives or not based on their serial number? I know one of the drives is definitely OEM (it has the OEM sticker on it), yet the WD website serial number checker doesn't say so, so I'm having my doubts about the accuracy of this. So I'm basically wanting to know if it's possible to track the origin of the drives based on their serial number.

Not likely.

Hi there.

For the WD drives, you cannot determine whether or not a drive is an OEM or not based on the serial number. Even when you enter the S/N in the warranty check option in the website the options that you can see are the Warranty Status of the product, and the Exp Date.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Actually when drive was used in other device then on WD/support site you will get that info ( if drive was registered as one ). Like when Dell or other manufacturer used it in their laptop then you get info that drive is under Dell warranty, not WD. The same with NAS or other external devices. In this case you get no info if drive has still warranty and you can't return it to WD support ( website will return info to contact device manufacturer but won't tell you who is it ).

Dell was just an example simply because I had that situation couple of days ago with drive which was in Dell laptop but I saw it couple of times before in other devices too.

So all depends if drive is registered in system as part of other device or not.

Exactly the same is with Seagate.