I suspect many of the home remedies, shaking the drive when in
operation, putting the drive in the freezer, swapping boards, may
have had more use when drives were smaller density, and before
they were IDE. People wanting to do these things may just
continue to do it with the hope of solving something, rather than
because they still apply. Given current density, there is a lot
less leeway for any fussing.



The oldest drive I've recovered with the freezer trick was a 2 gig IDE, the
newest a 30 gig, the last successful board swap was a 1 gig IDE, I've tried
it with a few newer drives and it didn't work.