Encrypted drives can be opened without the password. Difficulty varies of course, but it can be done (e.g. iPhone).
No, they can't. The way it's done is by trying many passwords until the right one is found. Once you have the right password, you can use it to decrypt the drive's contents, but then you are "opening it with the password".
(IIRC, there were some bad "hardware encryption" HDDs where the password wasn't actually used to encrypt the drive's contents, just verified against something in the drive's NVRAM; these can be bypassed. But that's not the case here.)
About those: http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Enclosed-but-not-e...
Sadly the images appear to be not working. But they were very clear: what should have been a point cloud had clear lines.
That you acquire the password in the process of opening it is immaterial.