A drill press is more dangerous (rotating tools can get clothes/gloves/hair caught in them), and less effective. Bending the platters is, in practice, irrecove

A drill press is more dangerous (rotating tools can get clothes/gloves/hair caught in them), and less effective. Bending the platters is, in practice, irrecoverable due to the sheer amount of data that's impossible to read in any reasonable amount of time unless the platter can be rotated while keeping the reading tool aligned. With a cleanly drilled hole, and some preparation (carefully machining out the area around the hole with precision tools), the platters would be a lot more suitable for partial data recovery.