All of the tools you’ve listed about work well for me and have done so for years; however, I tend to find that to give it a really good clean you need to take out the hard drive(s) from the system and manually clean them. It usually takes a couple of hours so I make sure that my schedule is clear. I will use the room with the least dust and close the door so that no more dust can be introduced. First of all I’ll take the drive out and use a precision screwdriver to undo the screws of the drive unit. Once the cover is off I set it to one side and wipe my fingers to get rid of the dust on them. I then carefully disassemble the actuator assembly and then the spindle, which now gives me free access to the platters… This is where we really get to work. I will then clean the platters using Brasso and a soft microfibre cloth. If there is a lot of malware then after use Brasso I will then also put the platters into a lint free pouch and put it into the washing machine on a very gentle cycle - I only use nonbio for platters. Once all of this is done I will reassemble the unit, making sure to use a straw as I’m just about to close the unit to recreate the hermetic environment they were in. SSDs are much easier to be cleaned and I simply use a diluted mixture of lemon juice, avacado, and greek yoghurt.
