That's it exactly. Unfortunately, this is only effective if the problem is a bad bearing in the
platter drive or the swing arm. It temporarily tightens things up just enough to get one more
day out of it. The downside is it can sometimes overtighten and destroy the bad bearing and
throw shrapnel into the mix, at which point you must unplug it and either turn it over to a data
recovery firm or recycle it.

I usually park the computer on top of the freezer and keep the drive plugged in all the time.
That can give me enough hours to back up everything.