It is quite possible, and in fact it is one of the methods used by data recovery services, so your intuition is spot-on (as usual).
If you are able to open the drives in a clean environment, lifetime need not be dramatically reduced. You could probably rig up a "clean box" to create a mini-environment that is dust-free.
I once cracked open one of my many stiction-afflicted Quantum 40MB 3.5" drives, and for fun, I hooked it up to a Mac, just to see how long it would run with the cover off. It ran, and ran, and ... I lost patience, went out to dinner, and came back to a very crashed, shrieking drive. So it ran for several hours with no cover.
I then made a Plexiglas cover for another one of these drives (inspired by Ze Cube transparent Classic), and substituted it for the original. I did all of this on the kitchen table, and took no particularly extreme measures to keep things perfectly clean. That was many years ago, and the drive still works. It's fun to watch the mechanism in action (once it decides to start up).
Now, a couple of rudimentary experiments hardly constitute a reliable data set, but it would seem that instant destruction is not an inevitable consequence of opening up a drive (of course, it helps that these old, low-capacity drives have generous track dimensions and head-platter separations; I doubt that modern drives would be anywhere near as forgiving). That, in turn, gives us some hope that a "clean box" that a weekend experimenter could economically construct just might suffice.
If you are able to open the drives in a clean environment, lifetime need not be dramatically reduced. You could probably rig up a "clean box" to create a mini-environment that is dust-free.
I once cracked open one of my many stiction-afflicted Quantum 40MB 3.5" drives, and for fun, I hooked it up to a Mac, just to see how long it would run with the cover off. It ran, and ran, and ... I lost patience, went out to dinner, and came back to a very crashed, shrieking drive. So it ran for several hours with no cover.
I then made a Plexiglas cover for another one of these drives (inspired by Ze Cube transparent Classic), and substituted it for the original. I did all of this on the kitchen table, and took no particularly extreme measures to keep things perfectly clean. That was many years ago, and the drive still works. It's fun to watch the mechanism in action (once it decides to start up).
Now, a couple of rudimentary experiments hardly constitute a reliable data set, but it would seem that instant destruction is not an inevitable consequence of opening up a drive (of course, it helps that these old, low-capacity drives have generous track dimensions and head-platter separations; I doubt that modern drives would be anywhere near as forgiving). That, in turn, gives us some hope that a "clean box" that a weekend experimenter could economically construct just might suffice.