A friend of mine dropped a harddrive when it was powered on, and not surprisingly the drive stopped working. It doesn't seem to spin-up and the BIOS is not recognizing the drive (heck, my Windows installation will not even boot from another drive with this one connected).

I'm checking if I can somehow get the drive to function again. It is a Samsung HD103UJ 1TB 7200 rpm 32 MB cache drive. When I power on the drive it makes a 10 second buzzing noise a couple of times, then some beeping sound followed by a faint whining and after some time it starts to make a 10 s buzzing sound again a couple of times before it stops producing noise at all.

He already tried freezing the drive, which didn't work. I tried twisting it firmly in the horizontal plane when the drive was turned off (I read somewhere that this could unstuck the heads from the cylinders).

Does any of you have other suggestions of things I can try? The nice thing is that for my study I work in a class 100 and 10000 cleanroom of our university. So I can open the drive in a relative clean environment.

If you want to do it yourself, you might as well save yourself time.
Here is a solution for you.
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www.datarecoveryne.com

Probably bent the spindle axis... meaning no you can't do it yourself.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

After freezing, a homeopatic solution would be microwave oven....
Jokes apart there's nothing you cand do. Game over. Please don't ask anymore help UNLESS professional help from someone of the forum.

If the data is not your data, then is it really your place to further risk it?

Also, opening in a cleanroom is just a small part in the recovery process. There is likely more chance of a pro recovering in a dusty old basement, than a newbie attempting in a clean room.

What you have is not just a broken hard disk, there are many more things that need to be considered and taken into account, things that an experienced professional knows of. It is much more complex than trying to 'free' the motor.

If your friend needs this data, you have just doubled the cost of recovery for him by opening and attempting to repair yourself. Never a good idea.

Lets just hope your friend does not want his data back.....

@hddguy,
After all this twisting, freezing, poking etc. are you STILL worried about the data ? If it was important the OP should have asked for professional help.
P.S. I still don't get why it's always "a friend", "my cousin" , "a friend of a friend..." ...

I am not worried about the data, I just find it a little confusing why this guy would do all this twisting freezing and poking with no regard for the data. I am sure if it was one of his own disks which failed he would seek professional help....

The data is not critical. I think it mostly consists of downloaded series, of which some are quite rare. He doesn't want to spend hundreds of $ to get the data again.

If there is no 'easy' way of getting the drive working again it is not worth my trouble. I just like to fiddle around with hardware. I've successfully repaired a drive before which had corrupted firmware, so I just wanted to give it a try (if you don't you always lose). But it is now clear to me that this drive can be considered lost.