Don't miss this blurb in the article:
This time, I wanted to debunk one of the oft stated rumors of the hard drive repair “professionals”: don’t open up the drive, because as soon as you do your data is as good as gone! And don’t forget the one about needing an ISO Class 5 clean room. Such claims seem a bit much, designed to get people to pay a thousand dollars to retrieve their data. Keep in mind that I’m not trying to get the drive in a permanently working condition; I just want to get it to read data for the hour or so it might require for me to copy off important files, and then the drive can hit the trash bin for all I care.
While he failed in his 3 attempts, there's great info in there if you decide to take that route.
