My wife's home computer, a very kewl as of 2001 Gateway desktop-and-monitor PC, died today.  The hard drive is able to begin to boot Windows XP -- you see the logo -- so that implies that some data is loading from the disk.  However you hear lots of seeking noises, and ultimately no finding. 

We probably don't have much data to salvage on it.  I find that in a cloud computing world, I've Gmailed just about anything of importance to her or to whaterver person I'm working with. 

Still, I would like to take one last look at the hard drive. So my question is, and I'm not kidding -- how hard do I hit it?  Do I pick up the unit and drop it?  Do I take a rubber mallet to it?  Do I gently tap it as it tries to boot?

Reminds me of a wisecrack circa 1979 -- on a clear disk, you can seek forever.

Thanks,

/rich