There was also the opposite direction: Putting a drive that's locked up in an oven on low heat to unstick the drive-head.... I knew someone who had to do that ~30 years ago after a long-running server had a power failure and the head had stuck to the platter as it cooled.
This was back when opening the drive itself up to figure out what was wrong was still reasonably unlikely to make things worse (I know that first hand from having "kickstarted" my own drive every morning for months while saving up for a new one by opening it up and nudging the platter)
This was back when opening the drive itself up to figure out what was wrong was still reasonably unlikely to make things worse (I know that first hand from having "kickstarted" my own drive every morning for months while saving up for a new one by opening it up and nudging the platter)