[Kluggy]

It's difficult, but not impossible to do the recovery yourself. Swap the platters between two drives and clone the data to a fresh drive. I've done it on some 2 tb drives way back when.

[alexdns]

The stupidest thing to do first is moving platters. You move the PCB first from an OK drive to a NOT ok drive

[netsharc]

I've done this, but on IDE drives, over a decade ago. I wonder if nodern SATA drives store their encryption keys on the platter or on the PCB. Afaik even drives where the data is accessible on boot has encryption, just that the key isn't password protected, it's a convenient way to turn on encryption, just encrypt the key instead of overwriting the whole disk...

[consp]

If you have self encrypting disks you are screwed anyway and they are more common today than ever. There are some with the "nice" feature of resetting the initial key to the same value every time though.

[Mashimo]

A lot (but not all) of modern drives past the 8 TB mark are Helium filled. They are airtight.

[justinclift]

With sufficient time and motivation, that's not really a barrier. ;)

[paulmd]

even if you get it open, you better have a plan to refill it, because the helium is needed for the head to float above the platter properly.

[justinclift]

Of course, that's a given. ;)

[brcmthrowaway]

Does it have an air inlet??

[pshirshov]

As far as I'm aware, you can't do this on modern HDDs because of the unique mapping/calibration data stored on a chip on the PCB.

[gsich]

I would check for a fuse on the PCB first.