Frustrating hard drive crash

[acer34e]

I bought a brand new Seagate Barracuda 80 gb hard drive and loaded Windows XP pro on it. After one week of using it off and on I went on vacation for two weeks. The day I returned I booted up the computer. It was very, very slow booting but it made it to the desktop. Thinking it was a fluke I opened a program I normally use. The program was stuck on its splash screen for more than seven minutes. I wasn't able to Ctrl-Alt-Del end task or anything. I did a hard reboot and when it booted up again, it doesn't even recognize the drive. I've tried slaving it to another XP HD but the system won't even boot to the desktop, I've booted off a Knoppix Linux cd and it recognizes the hard drive but is unable to mount it. I've even tried the old refrigerator trick but to no avail. It has some important pictures to me but not worth a 1,000 dollar recovery. Is this something I can fix myself and justify voiding the warranty? Any and all help is greatly appreciated!!!

 

[psasu]

I cant figure out your plan.
If the disk is bad and you want to do away with it then why dont you try to recover the data; in that case you can try stellar phoenix-

http://www.stellarinfo.com

 

[acer34e]

My intentions are to recover the data in hopefully the cheapest way possible. I have data recovery software but as I stated the computer won't even boot up with the seagate slaved in. Has anyone had successful experience recovering the data by using a second drive's parts to repair the drive? It would be cheaper than sending it in to a data recovery site but I would (A) void the warranty and have (B) potential human error doing it myself. I just need options and input so I can weigh my decision.

 

[dbData]

You can find more information about data recovery at

http://www.howtorecoverdata.com.

Rick