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I had this happen once but the force that would cause the drive to work seemed to be gyroscopic rather that pressure on the casing. So I had to hold the laptop at an angle and turn myself around on the spot while I copied the data off. If I stopped spinning around the drive would grind/crash and the OS would hang.

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Using a centrifuge to separate valuable data from low value redundant components is inspired!

The ones sink because they’re heavier.

You didn’t get sick ?

I only had to do it for several minutes, long enough to have it boot up successfully and copy off the most important data over wifi. I do remember getting a bit dizzy during the procedure. The laptop was a pretty light PowerBook G4 from 2003.

My theory (based on the sound the drive had been making, which prompted me to try imposing different kinds of sideways acceleration on the laptop until I could hear the drive spinning ”freely”) is that it wasn’t a problem with the disks/heads but a messed up bearing in the spindle motor.

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