(2010-11-18: received replacement from Newegg)
It looks like someone dropped another hard drive corner-first onto this one while it was sitting upside-down. The impact happened some time between the drive being put in its anti-static bag in Thailand and the bagged drive being wrapped in bubble-wrap at Newegg's warehouse, because there was a small tear in the anti-static bag right at the point of the damage shown above.