This is an another great historical lost of bitcoin. According to Howell, it was his girlfriend that threw the harddisk into the waste in 2013. And he has been searching for it for 12 years. And he has used different devices plus planning robot to search for it but no avail and finally gave up the search. And right now that bitcoin price is on the peak, the 8,000 BTC he lost would hit very big amount. This is a very painful lost and he never forgive the girl.
Recovering those data from will give him at least 1% chance. But finding that thing there? Will give him at least 0.1% chance, its near impossible, that mass garbage for how many thousands m², its width and the height of the garbage fills for more than a decade. I really wonder if it still there or some kid have it separated from the garbage truck and make them like a toy instead.
I agree that there is a possibility that other people may have picked up that HDD, then incinerate it for disposal. If this thing happen then there is 0% chance of recovring that HDD no matter what method he will use.
This is really a great example of securing the seed phrases of every wallet and addresses that will hold our cryptocurrency. I do not know what is in the person's mind of not securing the private key. Bitcoin in 2013 is already expensive, an 8k BTC can worth at 2013 lowest price of $13.40 (January 2013) is worth $107,200 while at its peak price of $1,163 (December 2013, on Mt. Gox) is around $9,304,000. Even if we say the price is in the average of the 2013 price range, it is still a significant amount of money.
So I guess we must take this scenario as a lesson and start securing our private key and seed phrases outside our HDD.