Most are not. First set are old drives. Generally 5.25 inch slots. Older drives like this, pre-ATA drives. IDE and earlier. Common enough to be looking. The second set are high performance SCSI drives where gold plated stack is used. Third location is VERY high speed drives. 15k or faster. Here when you get into the 22k rpm speeds gold alloy is more common for weighting more than anything. The common copper and silveride loop stacks are too light and cause vibration in the heads. Though now you’re more likely to find some sort of rare-earth transition metal in these. Heavier and not as fragile.
For all the above: Gold is a very soft metal. Gold plate is considerably harder. But, any of the gold ring stacks used will be “deformable” by hand. Squeeze the loop hard between two fingers. If it indents, it’s probably gold to some degree. The easier to pinch the more gold, silver and aluminium in the metal. The harder it is it’s more nickel and copper than gold.
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