Drive Surgery
I've had this laptop hard drive at work whose motor was seriously failing
that would have been nice to recover. However, after running for a few
minutes, the bearing would inevitably sieze, and there would be read errors.
I noticed last night that I owned another very similar drive -- just one digit different in the part number -- that had a perfect motor, but bad platter or heads (causing read errors). After opening it, it became clear that the difference is the number of platters. The motor in these is integrated right into the aluminum chassis, so just swapping it is not possible.
No matter, I moved every other part from the drive I wanted to recover. To make a long story short, it didn't work. The drive wouldn't read properly.
But it was still a fascinating experiment.