I wonder if
the hard drive and motherboard manufacturers would have any
sympathy for people who are making time capsules and give out their
proprietary information? Probably not but it's worth a shot. :)
There isn't _that_ much proprietary information, actually, other than
gate-level diagrams of all the chips, which you have _no_ chance of getting.
What about the details of the block replacement algorithm and data
structures?
What about the details of the operation of the embedded servo?
What about source code of the firmware?
Reverse-engineering a working drive might be feasible (but very
difficult); Reverse-engineering from a broken drive (or pieces of
a drive) could be *very* challenging. If someone handed me a
100-year-old hard drive (possibly containing the only surviving
copy of the Ada compiler for the Analytical Engine), I think I'd
tell them it wasn't worth the effort. And bear in mind, I'm
someone who thinks that preserving the history of computing is
important!