Do hard drives really have open cases now?
Comparing the TigerDirect page for a Seagate ST2000DM001 to the Amazon page for the ST2000DM001, we see that the TigerDirect page includes a few more pictures for that exact model number.
One of the pictures shows the drive with the case on.
This suggests that the other 3 stores you checked just decided, for whatever reason, not to show the product as shipped. This would be a marketing decision. The drives either still come enclosed or the Seagate ST2000DM001 is different from different stores -- which doesn't seem likely.
No, hard drives are in sealed enclosures and these images are marketing shots to give you an idea of the engineering inside.
@Paul is absolutely correct.
Hard drives need to be enclosed (I'd say sealed, except they are not quite sealed - but the tiny area which is not sealed is behind a heavy filter).
It makes sense that drives need to be sealed when you realise how they work. The drive head floats very slightly above the platter to read the information. The thing is that that gap is tiny. A finger print or speck of dust is several orders of magnitude bigger then the distance between the head and the platter, so even the smallest amount of dust would cause the drive to die very quickly. Similarly it makes it easy for the head to be knocked, and even the slightest knock can damage the drive.
Another vector to prove that drives are closed -
- New drives are (or will) be sealed with helium inside so even more performance and density can be squeezed out. You can't do this if the drive is not sealed.
- Go to your nearest computer store and ask. They will show you all new drives are sealed.
- Go find some information about "clean room" drive recovery. This is where they remove the platters from the drives to to put them with other heads to try recover data. Clean rooms are all about zero-dust, because even a tiny amount of dust will kill the drive before the data can be removed.
This is not new. Here's an ad for a 10 MB HDD which also most definitely did not ship with open disks.
https://plus.google.com/+DeryaUnutmaz/posts/hUWkX1Ukhiy
Here's how a 10MB HDD looked like
