Do hard drives really have open cases now?

I'm shopping for new hard drives and all the stores (Amazon, Overstock, Newegg, etc.) now show product pictures like this:
Typical product photo used by hard drive vendors

I can find no information in the product descriptions or in Google searches stating that this is just another marketing gimmick and that the drives really are enclosed.
Here's an example hard drive page on Amazon.

The replacement drives are to go into an external array (Drobo) that blows unfiltered air over its drives. Last I heard, even the tiniest bit of dust can trash drive components, but maybe technology has changed on me again?

Is dust no longer a concern for 2 and 3 TB drives?
Are these units really covered? I don't want to spend a few hundred bucks to order them before knowing.
If they really are covered, what reason would a marketing team have to only show pictures of the guts?
If they are not covered, how do I buy one that is?

Brock Adams

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 2 000

21Look closely on the edge. You'll find six holes used for the screws which will be holding the cover in place. This way of displaying drives is not new. First time I saw it was more than a decade ago. It does tell you a bit more about what product you are buying than a picture with the cover attached would. From a picture with the cover attached, most people couldn't even tell the difference between a disk and an SSD. – kasperd – 2014-10-21T06:55:48.957

21If it helps, I work at Seagate and can confirm that I know of no drives which are shipped to consumers without a case and there have not been any for about 20 years at least as far as I know. The reason being is that the platters are so sensitive to dust they need to be kept in a clean room when open to avoid damage. – Vality – 2014-10-22T16:59:33.520

4Those are just marketing pictures. No drives are shipped that way. – RockPaperLizard – 2014-10-24T21:26:27.987

4This question appears to be off-topic because it is about why a certain image is used in a marketing a hard drive. – ChrisF – 2014-10-27T12:36:24.077

@Vality your comment "have not been any for about 20 years at least as far as I know" suggests that 20 years ago there were? can you provide any further info? or did you mean you have worked there for about 20 years and haven't seen any and doubt there ever were. – barlop – 2015-02-23T07:09:57.017

@barlop I had not meant to imply that there were any such disks before then, I am just saying that I only have experience on what existed going back to about 20 years ago and cannot comment for sure either way on what may have been before that. I doubt there was ever any commercial drive like this but there may have been something used in research long ago but I would know nothing about that. – Vality – 2015-02-23T10:05:33.547

@Vality I didn't mean/say that you implied, I meant that you suggested it or left the suggestion very open. I am glad you have now clarified, but try to phrase yourself better next time. – barlop – 2015-02-23T11:38:10.450

Answers

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.

LDC3

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 2 062

21It's clearly a marketing decision. A fully enclosed hard drive would be simply a beige box and very hard to distinguish from other storage technologies like SSD, CD/DVD/BR Drive, etc. Showing a product shot with the cross section of the drives makes it easier to identify that the product is a hard disk without having to read the text (keep in mind that these stores may sell to people who don't know a single word of English). – Lie Ryan – 2014-10-21T09:39:38.890

@LieRyan Just a beige box?

– TylerH – 2014-10-22T18:44:10.460

9I don't think I have purchased a beige pc component since 1994 and that was the case of my 486. – Roger – 2014-10-24T14:07:04.623

133

No, hard drives are in sealed enclosures and these images are marketing shots to give you an idea of the engineering inside.

Paul

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 52 173

7Thanks, Paul. I hope you are right, but do you have evidence? Links? – Brock Adams – 2014-10-21T05:11:58.707

75I don't have evidence or links, just the knowledge that an open hard drive like that would break instantly. – Paul – 2014-10-21T05:36:16.647

@BrockAdams: evidence: look at how they are actually assembled in the factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4qBl8x3tC0 ... they are working in dust-free rooms, with LOTS of protection so that anything their body emits wont hit the disks.

– akira – 2014-10-21T05:51:06.373

Thanks, @akira, but that video was posted in 2008. Which is, oddly enough, when I was working for a Toshiba drive supplier. I couldn't be sure that technology hadn't changed on me in the last 3 years. (Lots of techniques, that were unacceptable when I started out, like holding things in place with solder alone, are now standard practice.) – Brock Adams – 2014-10-21T06:04:07.987

@BrockAdams: this happens when you operate a spinning disk wide open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hSHBO-yZRg

– akira – 2014-10-21T06:12:26.140

@akira, I am hours away from a store I can check and even more hours from when they are open. Also, tech has changed so much that I couldn't be sure that this was not practice now -- like how screen savers are no longer needed. – Brock Adams – 2014-10-21T06:13:53.920

1@BrockAdams The evidence is that the cover has stickers telling you not to undo any screw! – JamesRyan – 2014-10-21T11:07:40.950

Now that they start selling helium filled HDDs (that must be sealed really tight, compared to what we have now), it would be very strange if someone was able to build open ones, without heavy media coverage. – PlasmaHH – 2014-10-21T11:41:44.727

53Who needs evidence when one possess common sense? – eidsonator – 2014-10-21T14:10:39.773

22@Paul: one analogy I've found useful is that a harddrive read head is like the Empire State Building tilted sideways and flying over the earth, at the speed of sound, at an altitude of 10 millimeters. To scale, it's not a bad approximation. – imallett – 2014-10-22T03:36:06.730

6@eidsonator: And when two people's idea of "common sense" differs? Scientific reasoning rarely allows for "common sense" as a defence. – Lightness Races with Monica – 2014-10-22T15:24:40.343

5To clarify: most drives are not fully sealed. They contain a tiny hole to compensate for changes in air pressure - though the hole contains a filter to keep dust and dirt out. – Nathan Osman – 2014-10-22T18:39:20.967

@GraphicsResearch Has the Empire State Building grown since I last looked? – Pharap – 2014-10-28T09:23:46.697

A single particle of smoke could do massive damage. – David Schwartz – 2017-06-08T12:45:13.977

@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.

davidgo

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 49 152

2I know all that! (except for the helium bit) That's why I asked when 3 stores were showing me nothing but pictures of open drives. Also, many of us can't just "Go to your nearest computer store and ask". It may be after hours and 90 miles away. – Brock Adams – 2014-10-21T06:00:04.340

1Helium is just one possible technology tho. Shingled recording and stuff like HAMR is also used to increase storage density. I think only HGST does helium filled drives, and other companies seem to have managed to match that density without helium. – Journeyman Geek – 2014-10-22T00:18:45.940

8@BrockAdams: Then save it for a day when you can afford to make the trip during opening hours. Why does everyone need answers to everything "right this second"? And if you can't get a day off work well, that's not our problem and doesn't change anything! – Lightness Races with Monica – 2014-10-22T15:25:57.933

+1 for mentioning that the seal in not airtight, there is a hole with a filter an some silica gel in the HDD. The HDD won't die that quickly even without a clean room, see how they cut the cover with a dremel to put some plexiglas so that you can see the moving heads while the PC runs on this tuning site http://www.jackypc.com/index2.php3?rub=articles&num=211 It's in French, there are pictures but the video of the HDD running is gone sadly.

– Sacha K – 2014-10-27T19:08:35.610

Thanks for link and upvote. Just to clarify for other readers - this is very different to having an open drive, which will kill your disk in short order. I'm even suspicious of the link above is dubious as its a 13 year old disk (about 1/500th the capacity of current drives), and if even the minutest bit of dust gets into the drive it will kill it - if not immediately, over time. – davidgo – 2014-10-27T23:19:02.577

Not sure how quick an open HDD will die, but it definitely will. I have a 2 TB with bad sectors, I'll try to run it open when I have time. – Sacha K – 2014-10-28T12:04:38.963

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

ad for 10MB HDD

Here's how a 10MB HDD looked like

an actual 10MB HDD

chx

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 3 069

4They had the best noises when operating. I remember when these came out. Awesome! – Rory Alsop – 2014-10-24T15:03:17.220

At the time I inherited an old computer with this HD. Just for fun, I opened it and tried to run - it ran well, and even defragged as I watched the arm. I doubt it would've last long though. – Jonathan – 2014-10-28T10:13:03.970

It's marketing. A hard drive cover is boring; the internals look impressive. This isn't a new concept, for example this Intel processor doesn't actually have a semi-translucent heat spreader:

enter image description here

Jason

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 5 925

7Even if it had a transparent spreader... The cores inside aren't that big and look very different... That entire picture comes out of a graphics designers mind :-) At least tht HDD images show the real inside. – Tonny – 2014-10-21T21:30:44.667

2@Tonny I agree with on your first point. In regards to the hard drive image showing "the real inside", you'd be surprised. The image is often a "stock image" and isn't actually the hard drive being advertised. – Jason – 2014-10-21T23:02:06.330

3You're right of course... It shows A real inside, but not necessarily of the same model drive. I once saw a IDE drive picture for a SATA drive :-) – Tonny – 2014-10-22T11:34:17.177

For display purposes only.

The read-write heads move across the disk, flying on a thin film of air about 3-7 millionths of an inch thick.

Finger prints and the finest dust will bridge this, causing a head crash.

A human hair is a mountain in size in comparison at about 0.5-6 thousandths of an inch

Most drives available have a sealed container with a micro-filtered breather hole to keep out the dirt. The "most" excludes certain fully environmentally sealed technologies.

Fiasco Labs

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 6 368

Mechanical hard drives will always come in sealed metal enclosures.

The only exception I know to the "solid metal enclosure" rule, was the Western Digital Raptor X, a hi-performance 150Gb 10k RMP HDD: it was sealed with a transparent plexiglas enclosure, so you could effectively see the spinning disks and the moving head.

enter image description here

You can find more image about the Raptor X on this google search.

And I'm a proud owner of a WD Raptor X, it was the main HDD of my old 2007 PC build, and you could really feel the difference!
Today I consider it a collector's item :-)

Max

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 988

Also note the Amazon page you linked is for the DT01ACA200. That's a 1TB per platter drive, it has two platters and four heads yet the photo quite clearly shows 3 platters -- the picture does not change between the 2TB and the 3TB model (DT01ACA300) at all. That shows something is off.

In fact, the picture is very very likely to be of the 500GB 2.5" AV Western Digital drive from 2010: http://www.digit.in/storage/wd-av-25-2-5-inch-sata-hdds-with-silk-stream-advanced-format-technology-at-rs-2750-to-rs-4400-4294.html http://thumbs2.picclick.com/d/l400/pict/351079558689_/WD-25-500GB-16MB-SATA-II-Laptop-Notebook-MAC-PS3-Hard.jpg http://hardver-teszt.hu/news.php?newsID=681 and the official PDF at http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771362.pdf also has a very very similar pic. Needless to say in reality WD AV 2.5" it shipped sealed.

chx

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 3 069

If they really are covered, what reason would a marketing team have to only show pictures of the guts?

The marketing team sometimes doesn't produce any picture at all. If you do a Google image search for the image from the Toshiba page on Amazon you linked to, you'll find that same image for many other drives. It's basically clip art. There are so many models of hard drives, it's such an easily identifiable image and there's really not much marketable difference between the physical appearance of their guts (nobody really cares what the inside of a mechanical drive looks like at this point - it's on the same level as a picture of a DVD or, say, a piece of plywood on a home improvement store's web site), that many times there just isn't a special image, and stock art is used.

enter image description here

Jason C

Posted 2014-10-21T05:00:04.067

Reputation: 8 273