Why are hard drives open at the bottom?

AddRAM said:

There is no reason to worry about a hard drive in your area, I should be so lucky, I got off the plane there on a job once, and I was like WOW

There or Texas is where I`d like to move, but I gotta be near the Ocean to fish.

I got out of my Issuzu at work one night and raised a spark so big and bright, someone over 50 feet away saw it. I get zapped almost every day at home, some days worse than others. Winter is worst.

If you look real close, you can see 4 holes where the heat sink fan to cool the hard drive goes.

Y'all beat me to the punch.

Well I'm still no wiser.

My original question re possible damage by touching the exposed pcb came to me whilst swapping out a hdd (something I seem to do all the time - repairs, tinkering etc). I seem to handle hdds much more than ram or motherboards, so there's a slightly greater risk of static problems.

In normal use a hdd (like mobo, ram etc) would be installed once and never touched again, so the chance of static damage is the same as ram and mobo, although I think someone installing a hdd for the first time would expect the case to go all the way round and could accidently touch the circuitry just taking the hdd out of the box.

I guess the answer to the exposed hdd pcb is ease of manufacture.

Jed, unused anti static wrist strap hanging on hook on wall . . .