I'm also surprised with the ST31000333AS result.
I just opened up a healthy one, rotated top platter and reassembled. It didn't work. I'm pretty sure I've tried it again several years ago just to confirm alignment issue, with the same result.

I'm not doubting Luke's result or method, it just makes me wonder.

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Perhaps it is my stubbornness. When powered on, the drive clicks and seeks for about a minute, reads in bursts, seeks a bit more, reads another few bursts, repowers and carries on.

I suspect most would have given up and considered it a failure, not realizing that it works.

I did mark the platters for a visual alignment, but did't spend too much time trying to make it perfect.

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I have contributed to Lukes forum about platter alignment. For me (and I assume all others) I swap the platters using a more conventional method keeping the alignment and get the data back and read speeds are good. But then we go back and mess up the alignment as a test.

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Very cool, I'll give it another go. I will try to reproduce Luke's steps.
However, in my example from today, drive would click and spin down (and stays down). So I doubt it would eventually work.
But, I will make another test, will mark platters and spin them out of alignment for just a little. Will try to align them back just by matching the marks without paying too much attention.
I'm curious.

I will report back.

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On the tests I also made (and shared on Luke's forum), the platters were completely messed around (about alignment of course), and on those drives they all worked fine after.

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