Data Recovery Methods For A Toshiba DT01ACA100 Hard Drive?

[SalvagerPlus]

Hi HDD Gurus,

I hope you can help me. Here's the situation.

Was the media dropped, in a fire, flood or some other situation that would cause physical damage? NO
Is the drive making unusual clicking or buzzing noises? DRIVE IS SILENT BUT ENCLOSURE LIGHT IS ON
The drive detects in the BIOS, but with incorrect capacity YES, COMPLETELY BLANK EVEN IN DISK MANAGEMENT ALL FIELDS ARE EMPTY, AFTER MUCH FIDDLING IT SHOWS "0 MB"
The drive detects, but gives a high percentage of read errors when trying to clone HAVEN'T TRIED TO CLONE
Are there obvious signs of damage to the PCB? LOOKS NEW EXCEPT FOR GOLD PINS. GOLD PINS MISSING, REMAINING ARE BENT BUT NOT CURLED UNDER
Is there a smell of electronic burn coming from the PCB? NO
Is the OS crashing? THIS WAS TAKEN OUT OF MY DEAD DESKTOP AND PLACED IN AN ENCLOSURE. OVER TIME IT'S SOMEHOW GOTTEN WORN
Did files and/or folders randomly disappear? SHOWS EMPTY BUT I KNOW IT'S FILLED WITH LARGE FILES
Does the drive show uninitialized when connected to another OS? DOESN'T SHOW UP UNLESS SHOW HIDDEN IS CLICKED ON MY NEW DESKTOP
Does the drive stop responding while cloning, but seems to work fine again after rebooting, but never stays alive long enough to complete? HAVEN'T TRIED TO CLONE
Is the data loss due to formatting, deletion and/or overwriting of the files? NO
Is this something that you are not familiar with (ie, RAID, NAS, SAS, unknown file system, etc)? I DON'T HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE WITH DATA RECOVERY

The drive was working in the enclosure until I was stupidly organizing it by moving files from this HDD to a different folder on this HDD. I left the room, my sister came home and unplugged it and it hasn't worked since. Is there any way to get my data back? The drive finally shows up on my new desktop as the G: drive. Is it showing up empty because of the missing and damaged gold pins which could be solved by buying a SATA to USB adapter? I heard that you can disassemble an internal HDD and connect whats inside to your computer. This seems to be a last resort by data recovery shops but I'm willing to do it if I can get a detailed enough video or guide to do it safely. Is that advisable? How do I disassemble a Toshiba DT01ACA100?

Picture of damaged pins: http://tinypic.com/r/33nub0g/9

Thanks for any help.

[SalvagerPlus]

No everyone, unfortunately this is not a joke. The drive worked with the pins exposed until my sister unplugged it while I was organizing it. And though I haven't used it since then it's decomposing pretty rapidly. I'm willing to disassemble this like a data recovery company probably would but with the pins being the only damaged thing on the drive isn't replacing the pins a less invasive fix?

[SalvagerPlus]

Ok, thanks a lot for your help. Almost all the data on this is literally irreplaceable so I'm happy to hear I can salvage it. Thanks again.

[fzabkar]

Can you provide better photos?

[SalvagerPlus]

Here are a few more photos. I'm trying to figure out why my camera isn't focusing as well as it used to...

Attachments

[fzabkar]

This PCB supplier includes a free firmware transfer service:
http://www.hdd-parts.com/13062140.html

[SalvagerPlus]

Cool, someone here is going to do a firmware transfer for me. Thanks for your help guys.