What hardware do I use to recover data from a physically damaged hard drive?
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26You use a telephone, and you use it to phone a professional data recovery company and ask them how much it will cost to have them do it for you. Seriously, this is one of the cases where if you don't already know how to do it yourself then you absolutely should not even try. – Rob Moir Dec 20 '10 at 12:24
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It depends exactly what you mean: "physically damaged" could cover everything from a few bad sectors to having been put through an industrial thresher. Could you add more detail to your question? Though as Robert suggests, you might need to call the professionals in. – David Spillett Dec 20 '10 at 12:28
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If your asking as a personal user- then the answer, as others have said, is no. There aren't any hardware tools for fixing this. You need to weigh up the "worth" of the data with the cost of getting it fixed professionally. If your a business user, then you should be going to your backup rather than trying to fix this. If there are no backups, then its an expensive lesson to learn, and you should be calling the professionals.
AliGibbs
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If the processor board is the damaged part, you can replace that with a controller board from an identical make/model hard drive. Otherwise, what Robert Moir said.
peg_leg
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Not sure if you would be able to try this since the drive is physically damaged.
One of the tricks is to freeze the hard disk. Put it in a ziplock bag and put it in the freezer overnight. If you are lucky you might get enough life out of it to get your data out.
Disclaimer: YMMV
Sameer
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From a proposed edit: There is the real possibility of success but please ensure that no moisture gets at the drive so double up on the ziplock bags. http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux – user9517 Oct 19 '11 at 19:00