Bad ST920315AS Seagate drive - help needed!

[biton161]

Hi,
My laptop's 250GB 2.5 HD went dead two days ago. No physical damage or power surge I am aware of. Will no longer boot suddenly.
The data is very valuable so I'm trying to salvage it.
Here's the behavior when I plug it via a USB adapter to another PC (consistent):
1. It spins
2. at the beginning I hear drive access sounds, then it stops and the drive keeps spinning
3. No grinding or clicking sounds
4. Drive is not recognized by windows
5. When I access Disk Management, I see it listed as a logical drive, not initialized, 0mb
6. When I hit properties it displays the correct model - ST920315AS, again with 0mb
7. Seatools (by Seagate) cannot access anything other than model number, including firmware number or do any tests

I have the option of doing a PCB swap, but before I order one I want to be more sure that the symptoms are consistent with a bad PCB.
Any thoughts? can I try to do a firmware flash?
Any help will be appreciated.
Barak.

 

[Mattios]

I have no experience with changing PCBs or whatever, but I'd say at least the PCB is gone if not the data too.

I'd suggest taking it to a recovery specialist and asking for a quote, then see if you want to pay them or try to replace the PCB with the risk of losing data.