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.