advice on recovering data from a failed hard drive?

[Heifetz]

Out of the blue, my hd just failed upon bootup. The first time, it made it to the windows boot prompt, but got stuck there. After that, it wouldn't even make it to the windows boot prompt. I tried to reinstall windows on the drive, but it would just lock up while windows installation was trying to read it. I finally managed to install windows on another hd, and haven't had a chance to try to savage anything yet.

What software, methods should I try to recover data from the hd? It has a lot of documents and pictures, which unfortunately was never backed up.

thanks

 

[jtvang125]

You're screwed. Take it as a lesson learned.

 

[twitchee2]

ive read on more then one occation that people have frozen their HDDS over night and they got a little while to get out what they needed. yo can try that you have nothing to lose/ but once you try it the HDD is DEAD

 

[Cheesetogo]

You could probably get someone to scan the platters, but that would most likely be very expensive. Try freezing the drive.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
You could probably get someone to scan the platters, but that would most likely be very expensive. Try freezing the drive.

In a plastic bag so that no moisture gets in.

 

[narcotic]

yep, do a search for the "frozen trick" or somthing like that.
many people said it actually work. And there's actually some scientific explanation for that if you want, then google it.