A head crash (assuming that's what you're describing when you say, "the head was scraping the platters") is good example of "it's always recoverable with enough

A head crash (assuming that's what you're describing when you say, "the head was scraping the platters") is good example of "it's always recoverable with enough money". For example, if you're really willing to spend money, there are special atomic force microscopes ("magnetic force" microscopes) that actually spin around the platter, which stays still, allowing individual bits to be read off of the disk. Of course, if the magnetic field is gone then it's certainly possible for it to be truly unrecoverable, but that bar is very very high. One firm, DriveSavers (which incidentally is who Apple sends all their data recovery problems to), has an ISO-5 cleanroom and maintains a hall-of-fame of ridiculous situations they've successfully recovered: http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/company-info/museum-of-bizarre-disk-asters/ http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/company-info/museum-o...