Hi there

I would highly recommend that you don't use any substances on the surface of your platters. Even the smallest fragment of dust can cause your drive to crash more.
There certainly are ways of recovering your data (assuming it's not very badly crashed), but you need specialist knowlegde and techniques.
Do you have any pics of your drive?

Thanks

DRE

DRExpert, thanks for the tip. In my lab there's a sign : don't give me any advice, I can make a terrible mess by myself.

BTW, if platters get contaminated, there's plenty of specialised chemical solutions for cleaning at low cost and WORKING, and.. yes... sometimes even badly crashed drives can be recovered.

(I must stop posting, I'm not in the right place, I feel... )