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> As long as you don't damage anything when opening up electronics

Considering the nature of hard drives, I think that would fall under damage caused by opening.

My understanding is that they are not in a vacuum, but they are super-clean. The air/gas inside is an important part by preventing the read/write head from touching the platters as they rotate. If a consumer opens it up, then dust is introduced which will cause problems.

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The higher-end and larger drives today are filled with helium (or vacuum in some exotic cases), and opening the case at all completely destroys the drive's ability to operate.

I'm pretty sure the helium-filled hard drives are incredibly difficult to seal, and IIRC are welded shut. I don't see how you'd open it in the first place without a dremel anyway.

Most hard drives today are ultrasonically welded shut (metal to plastic) and hermetically sealed. The helium drives are not much harder to get into than normal hard drives today. The difference in processing is actually only a few steps where they insert the helium and then close the final hole.

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