After some investigation, and help from many of you, I have determined my HDD is not functioning. The good news, if any, is that I believe the problem is that the circuit board on the HDD was the victim of an electrical issue that burned out the board and other components. So therefore I believe the data may still be on the magnetic part of the drive. My questions therefore are:

1. Is there a way to disconnect the memory part of the drive to a new board.

2. Anyone know of any reputable companies that do this kind of work? I have heard it's expensive but it's my kids vids.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperFlyFlippingA

If you can find the same drive, then you can swap boards. That is how many companies do it.

good luck with that. I had a drive crash that ended my learning animation a few years back. I had about 6 months worth of work that I lost, and didn't have the money to try to get it back. I could just never bring myself to come back and try to do it again. And now I am very paranoid about drive failure. I just got a new hdd, but I want to find another exactly like it so I can run Raid 1 to mirror the first. I would love to run raid 0, but I am too afraid something will go wrong. Now raid 0+1 would be awesome, but I don't have anywhere near the money to do that right now.

Sorry for your troubles. The cheaper way is to get an identical hard disc and swap the printed circuit boards. I have done it many times and it was successful when the drives were identical and the data was not corrupted. It will cost you dearly to send it to professionals but if you have no other way, this is the best (i think) company to recover your data.
http://www.ontrack.com/

Good luck, i hope everything goes well.

Thanks! How difficult is that? Do I need an engineering degree to swap the boards?

As luck would have it, I have recently had a positive experience with a data recovery company. In fact I still have the box sitting at my desk. www.cbltech.com is the company we used and they were able to recover virtually all data from the drive (ours had a head crash) They were fast (I forget just how fast) and all data was returned to us on two DVDs. If I remember correctly the entire procedure was around $900.

$900 is still is still a boat load for a $150 harddrive for that kind of money you could buy 4 external hardrives and have it backup your data everynight.

No, you just carefully remove 4 or 6 screws (for some drives they are star shaped, so be prepared) from the bottom of the drive, namely the screws that hold the board attached to the drive. The board is not loose yet. Very carefully you raise one corner just a tad and locate the connector of the board to the drive. You remove that (carefully, do not apply force, normally there is a locking mechanism) and you have one board and one drive apart. If you start with the broken one you will be prepared for the new drive and you will be alright. It is not difficult, just do not use force and before handling the electronics you should be grounded e.g. touch a radiator, a fridge or the case of your pc (a metallic part) to remove static electricity from your body.

Good luck!

WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU BACKED UP YOUR DATA?

Does that matter when I am asking a hardware repair question?

sorry, it was one of those general statements, kinda reminding myself out loud, and everyone else for that matter; at anytime for no apparent reason everything can go to Sh*t in the blink of an eye.

the older you hard drive is the harder it will be to find a replacement for the specific part, you don't need just "the same hard drive" but the identical hard drive, since manufactures are always changing the tiniest things to make the drive better or cheaper, so you need the same hard drive from the same plant on the same day to get the maximum chance of recovering you hard drive.

i think it was stated in the youtube link a had earlier in the thread
it's on Part 1