Found out the "percussive maintenance" trick has an actual name and a study behind it
I was reading through an old service forum thread about drives that won't spin up and someone linked a paper from a data recovery outfit in Ontario that tested freezing drives, and one of the techs mentioned they log every drive that starts working after a firm tap. The number that got me was that they saw about a 30 percent success rate on stuck spindle motors, which is way higher than I'd have guessed for something that feels like a joke. I've done the tap thing plenty of times but always figured it was pure luck, not something with actual repeatable odds behind it. Curious if anyone here keeps notes on which drives actually come back after a knock, or if we all just do it and forget.