Originally Posted by zakhal
I know one person that recoved data from broken 3,5" drive by buying an identical one (it was old and cheap), opening both and switching the disks. Eventually the hd was lost (dust etc got in) but it worked easily long enough to recoved all data.

That's how professional data recovery companies do it — and it's an insanely high-risk operation if you don't have a cleanroom to work in. At the scales these things operate, microscopic dust motes behave like boulders. I would never try this at home except maybe as an experiment, if I can afford to lose the data.