Si
As luck would have it I have two caddies available {one new one borrowed], both work fine with another disk and both ‘fail’ in the same way with this one, so think I have eliminated the caddy.
Old laptop performs identically with its disk removed, blank screen, irritating beep, nothing else.
Z1ppy, Might try the Linux option if he cannot recreate from the files on his phone. I can read the disk enough to find the library, but it does not seem up to allowing me to copy much of it.