Wonder what he would have done if the disks themselves were fritzed.
Does make one wonder about the variablity of drive internals, though.
Cheers
Mick
edit: BTW, opening drives out of clean room situations is not a good idea. While they spin up now, for a while, any minor bits of fluff, dirt, grit or dust that got into the mechanisms....
I hope he does regular backups now!!