everyone knows someone who thinks they can recover a hard drive

https://xkcd.com/2501

Well yeah, who doesn't know how to recover data... This is a great tool https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Also just live boot linux and use the strings command and point it at a harddrive and pipe out the string data to a file for name review

If the drive is toast there are paid services that will disable it and recover data off the drives with higher tech methods.