Attempting data recover off a possible dead hard drive (because I am a cheap bastard)

[notasandwich]

Laptop hard drive is clicking and possibly dead. I removed it from my laptop and hooked it up to a desktop and the drive was detected (although it was listed as unallocated), so I attempted to do some data recovery using some freeware programs I though. Unfortunately I messed up and now the drive no longer gets detected.

Instead of paying some Staples guy $70 to attempt a data backup I was considering opening up the drive to see if I could do the repair myself. Is this advisable? I don't have a special "clean" environment like a professional data technician and I might now have all the right tools (I wouldn't know how to replace the PCB, if that where the problem, but I've seen plenty of youtube videos that make it sound relatively easy

 

[Mark_1970]

Laptop hard drive is clicking and possibly dead. I removed it from my laptop and hooked it up to a desktop and the drive was detected (although it was listed as unallocated), so I attempted to do some data recovery using some freeware programs I though. Unfortunately I messed up and now the drive no longer gets detected.

Instead of paying some Staples guy $70 to attempt a data backup I was considering opening up the drive to see if I could do the repair myself. Is this advisable? I don't have a special "clean" environment like a professional data technician and I might now have all the right tools (I wouldn't know how to replace the PCB, if that where the problem, but I've seen plenty of youtube videos that make it sound relatively easy

replacing the pcb would far be the easiest, but when the drive is clicking, sounds more like the internals have busted, if the data is so important, pay a pro.
Your attempts will fail and make it impossible for the pro to ever recover for you

 

[notasandwich]

Laptop hard drive is clicking and possibly dead. I removed it from my laptop and hooked it up to a desktop and the drive was detected (although it was listed as unallocated), so I attempted to do some data recovery using some freeware programs I though. Unfortunately I messed up and now the drive no longer gets detected.

Instead of paying some Staples guy $70 to attempt a data backup I was considering opening up the drive to see if I could do the repair myself. Is this advisable? I don't have a special "clean" environment like a professional data technician and I might now have all the right tools (I wouldn't know how to replace the PCB, if that where the problem, but I've seen plenty of youtube videos that make it sound relatively easy

replacing the pcb would far be the easiest, but when the drive is clicking, sounds more like the internals have busted, if the data is so important, pay a pro.
Your attempts will fail and make it impossible for the pro to ever recover for you

I am currently running a program called NTFS Recovery toolkit in attempt to perhaps recover what little data I can but out over the 1 billion total hard drive sectors about 7 million that have so far been scanned are being reported as damaged. It it going to take several more days just to finish scanning the drive so I have no idea if it is even worth it at this time.