I don't read wired, so not sure if my story is similar, but I have a damage hard drive with 30+ coins on it. It may be worth trying a little harder to restore it...
Just how is the hard drive damaged? Most of the time... the data is fine, but some board-level component died.
Lots of people out there are capable of swapping boards from the drive and swapping the chips storing any user-specific data , then enabling access to the data.
I used to have somewhere around 100 in a wallet from the early days when bitcoin fountains were still a thing. Platters are shattered and no backups, I thought I had it backed up, but it's gone. I can't tell you how many times I've searched for a way to recover that wallet.
no big deal, no need to waste your time on that