Halcitron wrote:

Harddrives are hermetically sealed. If needed they can be overhauled
(replace the circuit card) to make them work long enough to recover the
data.

I tell people to never ever format a harddrive, let the tech do it, but
in reallity, I just keep the old drives, because the data is still in
them.

There are data recovery firms, who can disassemble a harddrive and
using lasers, they can read the data strings on the platters, then they
can reassemble the data, but that is last resort and costl
--------------------
I have disassembled several dozen hard drives.
I love the magnets, very small and very strong!
But they all have had vent/breather holes with sub-micron filters
in the top. I suspect that all hard drives are built this way.
Take an old one aaprt and you will see what I mean.

Terry