Did you ever try the left hand drill bits before the extractor? I used to think those were a gimmick but they walked a broken stud right out for me last month, no helicoil needed.

Man, the part about being wrong is what gets me. We all got that one thing we swore was a gimmick until life smacked us with a 40 minute flashlight session. Here is the thing though, those cheap trays don't just save you the screw you dropped, they save the next three you were about to drop too, because now you actually got a spot to put stuff instead of balancing it on the frame. That is the real win nobody talks about. It is not about the magnet being strong, it is about the habit it forces you into.

Oh man that's brutal, two hours of fiddling with settings for a disc that was never gonna work. Library rentals always seem to have like six discs in the case too, so I get how that happens.