Since most drive failures are not head disk interferences much less a crash, the proposed process would unnecessarily both add cost and increase the risk of head disk interference without, IMO, significantly changing the data recovery probability. The small particles that do the most damage are not visible so I am not sure what one would do upon opening a drive unless there are many large visible particles indicative of a rare catastrophic head crash. When there is a catastrophic head crash the debris is well distributed by the rotating disks, damaging all the heads and disks then. At this point the damage is done and subsequent shipment and testing is not likely to do much more damage. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible and certainly expensive to recover data when there is such a catastrophic failure. A simple audio test should be sufficient to detect a catastrophic failure at which point you turn the drive off and consider the very limited options available. One might consider a particle count test for contamination but then it is not clear what one would do about it, purge cycle perhaps. So it seems to me that opening every drive is of little value Tom