I do this for a living, so here's some tips/tricks, they go in order of expense/trouble/ease and different senerio's ect:

First and foremost, if you don't know what your doing, don't do anything, if the disk is corrupt, or parts are written over, the more you access the disk (hard drive) the more corrupt it will become

If the drive is accessible:

If the drive is still ok, slave it, and retrieve your data

If the drive is corrupt, slave it, and use GetDataBack, its cheap, and extremely effective, I use it all the time to recover deleted files, I can go back sometimes months to get data

There's other recovery software as well, but I find GetDataBack as good as any.

If the drive is not accessible:

I have loads and loads of dead drives I keep, on 90% of hard drives, in the circut board blows on the drive from brownout or overload, you can just change the board off the drive, its secured usually with a few torx screws, and a few very small ribbon cables

There is a method knowen as "the freezer trick" it involves:

Having a PC ready that you can slave the drive.

Put the Drive in the freezer in a plastic bag to keep frost off, for a few hours (4-6) quickly slave the drive on your space PC, and get your data off ASAP, seriously, it works

If you have a clean room (hey, you never know right?)

You can swap the platens/platters out with another housing, its advanced, I've done it, its a last resort

You can also send your drive away to get the data recovered off it, there are business that do it, last time my work sent some drives in, it was $4500, but it was our domain controller, so it was worth every penny

You can also "Clone" the drive, using something like Norton Ghost (now symantic ghost)and sometimes get your data off that way, or at lease have a backup of your data to send away, keeping the original in your hands.

If your in a bind, you can ship me the drive, and I'll run my software and methods against it and see, I wouldn't charge you, I follow the FOIP standards (ie, I wouldn't copy your stuff and post it everyhwere) if its not data sensitive. I've done 2 drives last week, with 99% success rate (there were encryped files that didn't recover on one). Offer's open anyway, as I said, I do it for a living, and wouldn't mind helping a fellow gun nut out.

If the data's still on there, I can say with 99% certainly I can get it back as well as anyone out there.

9.3x57, same goes, if you want to ship it bonded courier, I can have a crack at it, and would ship it bonded back, keeping in mind customs may have a look at it, you never know.

This assumes of course your data is NTFS or FAT, I don't work with Mac's

-Trev

Edit: Almost forgot, if you don't feel comfortable opening your new PC to slave the drive, figure out if your old drive is IDE or SATA (google will help) and purchase an external drive enclosure, put your old drive inside, boot up your new computer, plug in the drive via USB, and voila! all your files should be on there (assuming the drive is OK)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...5-133-_-Product

(That ones IDE)