Can you submerge a hard drive in mineral oil?

Ever since we started developing oil-submersion aquarium kits in 2007, we’ve been repeatedly asked if you can submerge the hard drive in the oil along with the rest of the components. Our answer has always been a yes for SSDs and a no for traditional platter hard drives. While we are very confident in our answer, we have never actually tested to see exactly what happens. So, to finally set the record straight we decided to take the plunge and dunk a hard drive into mineral oil.