Ah Seagate, good memories!

In the 90's they had this policy that you can send them a broken HD and they would replace it with a new one. Since they wouldn't make the old version anymore, the new drive would have more capaciy.

So at first you could just send them your hard drive and you would get an upgraded back.

I was probably not the only one who heard about it, and so they started testing the incoming drives to see if they were really malfunctioning.

I once tried to break such a drive. Formatting the hard drive while bashing it on the table. The thing kept going, no problem.