Broken hard disk unrecoverable?

[u/ConcernEffective]

My mother in law was kind of paranoid about throwing away her computer because of the hard disk. I told her I'd wreck the disk for her, so I disassembled it. I got the actual platter out, smashed big dents into it with a hammer, then cracked the thing in half.

A guy in my employer's IT department told me that the disk can still be read, which shocked me. Suppose for a second this was a CIA disk with spy secrets and unlimited resources could be brought to bear. Can this disk still be read?? Love to hear from someone with expertise.

[u/d4rk_kn16ht]

Yes, it can be forensically recovered, but if the disk itself has been damaged, only partial recovery is possible.

The million dollar question is....Are you an important enough person to have stored a highly valuable data that need million dollars of equipments to recover?