Typically this is something that works only when you hear the dreaded clicking noise. The noise, a skipping read/write head, is the true problem this fixes. This method slows down everything in the drive. It honestly only works with HDDs and flash drives, not solid states though.

I have personally been able to recover countless HDDs (and flash drives too!) using this method. Maybe you should, I don’t know, test something? before you call it dumb.