Yes, stiction is a real issue in old hard drives. In fact something that used to work well if you were cold booting an old server even in the mid 90s, with the expectations of an immediate migration, was giving the drives a good sharp slap to help break stiction so they could spin up. The only issue is it could cause a head crash. Another fun trick from back in the day was sticking hard drives in the freezer to cause the platters to shrink enough to dislodge the head and restore the air gap if you had a head crash so you could try to recover the data.
As much as I love hardware, I much prefer our current solid state wonderland.
> to shrink enough to dislodge the head and restore the air gap
Huh?
What I heard is what a cold drive would be a bit more magnetically stable and IMMSMV that surely worked, because I never had a drive with a stuck heads but I did had drives what would just abort the read or return gibberish, but after an hour in the freezer they would read just fine, till they heat up again. That's for the drives mfg after 2000, if that matters.
My understanding may be incorrect, after all the freezing the drives trick is mostly something that was shared among sysadmins like an old wive's tale. Nonetheless, it does work (or did).
The way I had always understood it was that if you had a head crash (which was caused by the head physically contacting the platter, overcoming the resistance of the air gap between the head and platter, usually due to physical impact) that the magnetism of the head would prevent it from lifting back up on its own, and that freezing the drive would cause the metal in the platter to contract away from the head, which was restricted in movement by its armature, thereby restoring the air gap and lifting the head away. If you started the drive spinning before it heated, the head would stay out of contact and you could successfully read data (some of it, for awhile).
As much as I love hardware, I much prefer our current solid state wonderland.