Crazy as it may seem, there are some people in forums on the Internet that swear they have "solved" the problem with their hard drives by dropping it on the floor (with carpet) from a table (2.8 feet), and use the drive until today without any problem.
We can't doubt it, because lucky breaks can happen. Therefore we can't recommend or support in any way someone who says something so silly. Any hard impact, mainly on a drive that's already not okay and which problem we don't know, is playing with fate. Trying to guess what the problem might be, without knowing what the real problem is, seriously jeopardizes any chance of data recovery.
If data stored has no value, then playing and trying non-professional techniques is worth it. But the worse is that some people give this piece of advice in hardware discussion forums. Some hard drives stop working due to the fall.
