I am not sure if it's still the case, but the biggest case of bubble wrap abuse (in a good yet excessive sense) I've seen so far is with SVP.
As to how Amazon dealt with that HD.. Yickes I guess. Looks like I'll stay away from buying mechanical HD from them. Shame though, they are still one of my favourite e-tailer overall.
I do understand the point about hard to open packaging though. I was glad to see that WD finally stopped doing that with their Passport series. I've got 3 of them, the first two I bought required kitchen scissors to butcher the package (rendering it unusable), whereas the last one didn't.