I left my computer (running XP) copying files to an external drive. After returning a few hours later, the laptop was pretty hot and had frozen.
I forced a reboot, and the laptop HDD hasn't worked since. I've set it up in an external enclosure, but XP can't mount the HDD to a drive letter, but is able to recognize the manufacturer and drive size (Hitachi, 320GB). There is no noise or rattling when the drive is spinning, but I can't get anything off of it since it can't be mounted, or see much of anything.
A computer repair shop ran some software tests and says that it came back with a "Zero Sector bad" message, and I need to send it to a professional data recovery service.
Are there any other options or ideas, before I have to spend thousands of dollars to recover my data?