system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
You can get about 30 min of usage out of a functioning but open hdd. Then the micro dust particles kill it. Have had to do it to get sensitive data off before. Freezing it also can help a bit. As the moisture  builds from condensation it keeps the disk cleaner by flinging it off at the insane rpms. But water gets in the actual head and its dead lol
gpt
You may not even need to freeze it totally. Just cooling it down for 10-15 mins can often do the trick and get it running for a few minutes to get the most urgent data off.

Source: Used to do repairs, and did this on at least 50 drives. Was able to recover data from \~40 of them, the others were totally dead.

Those other drives still haunt my nightmares.