Its just ~$180,000 worth of bitcoin

no big deal, no need to waste your time on that

Just how is the hard drive damaged? Most of the time... the data is fine, but some board-level component died.

Lots of people out there are capable of swapping boards from the drive and swapping the chips storing any user-specific data , then enabling access to the data.

You could also just mail me the drive if you get tired of it...

I used to have somewhere around 100 in a wallet from the early days when bitcoin fountains were still a thing. Platters are shattered and no backups, I thought I had it backed up, but it's gone. I can't tell you how many times I've searched for a way to recover that wallet.

I don't read Wired either, so not sure if my story is similar, but I think I'm out of clean socks so I might need to do laundry tonight.