Drive manufacturers hide screws under the labels. Damage to the labels could indicate tampering, in the same way that warranty will be voided for damage to the gasket shown in the same gallery
Additionally, Damage to the label could indicate attempts at RMA-Fraud, by transferring stickers from one drive to another
At least because of the anti-tampering measure, drive stickers are usually quite hard to remove: The rip like that also suggests general mistreatment.
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Hard drives are enormously fragile devices, and that's what gives seagate reason to be so picky with what they choose to refuse. I've worked for a while at a computer recycling organisation, and hard drives are by far the most broken components we get in. I estimate between 1/3 and 1/2 of all the drives we have arrive broken. And almost none of those broken drives show any physical damage at all. With the exception of the scratched external case (just pure cosmetic damage), and the sheared screw-head (that's the screw's fault, surely?), I think almost all of the images presented demonstrate gross mistreatment of the drives.
This, IMO, includes the images of the scratched sides. I've never seen drives that look like that, and even drives that I take out of machines semi-regularly do not scratch up like that: - It'd mean that either the drives have been inserted and removed an inordinate number of times (more than is reasonable to design for), were inserted or removed roughly, or were inserted into a case that was not suitable for the job.
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