hard drive failure

[gordonv]

I had my HD crap out the other day, it failed, nothing. In the past, it was just corrupted and re-installing the OS fixed it. Had to restore my programs and the like, but no lost data. I back it up at that time. But I forgot a few things like email profile and address book, so I lost everyone's email.

Now with Telus no longer handling email anymore, I was unable to restore my Thunderbird to handle my emails, and have to use webmail online now.

But that was June, and everything since was lost. 4 months of "stuff". Luckily with no trips this year, no Valhalla June/Sept pictures, but I would have copied them to postimage.org for sharing, and I would have been able to recover them from there. Which I did for a family event.



Bought a new drive, restored my back ups, and up and running again.


The problem is the failed drive is not seen by the PC. So I suspect power or the board failed.

Does anyone have any experience of professional recovery of the HD?

Local?

Can I swap out the electrical circuit board with exactly the same, or is there data on the board specific to the directory of the HD platters? No IC, no data.