Did you actually get it to work after transplanting the platters?
I haven't exactly tried it as yet, first I had to find the right sized T-? bit which the size of all the T bits I have was of course the size I didn't have. Now I have the right bit but don't feel like possibly trashing the new/used matching drive I got on Ebay to see if the data is any good. Maybe someday when the new/used drive starts to go I'll try the swap.
SMART monitoring hasn't worked very well for me. It only started warning me once there was serious problems with the drive which were noticeable anyway.
I suppose you could say it worked for me but only tells you if somethings wrong when you restart Windows in DOS which I guess since Windows has to be restarted often works well. The drives didn't exhibit any signs of their future demise.