I have seagate laptop 160 GB hard drive. I have kept it inside a USB enclosure kit.

The hard drive has about 150 GB data on it, I was watching a movie on my laptop from this USB HDD.
suddenly movie was stuck and hard disk never showed up under windows explorer.

When I attach the HDD to any other computer, it load the driver, I do see it under Device Manager as Universal Disk Drive under Disk Drives. But I dont see that HDD is detected in windows explorer or in disk management under Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools\

I want to check if anyone knows what shall I do, recovery guy is asking 300 $ for it. I do have some pictures/home videos on it and some outlook pst which was important, but not worth 300 $

I saw programs like MHDD etc which do something, but I am scared to use them. I am a technical computer professional with some good hand on windows/dos/unix/hyper terminal etc.

Is my hard disk dead ? Can I recover data on my own, I am ok to purchase few things to fix it, but I dont want to give that guy 300 $... if something can be done on my own to about 200 $ I can handle it.

ANy help is appreciated.

Hope it's just the enclosure and check the disk separately.

Depending on what happened "maybe" you can succeed but nobody will do the job for you or guide you step-by-step for free. All you can do assuming ALL the risk is try to clone the drive but IF and only IF the disk is at least identified and is at least decently working. The disk CAN die during this "process" while with professional equipment this risk is minimized or close to zero. If the disk is isolated, worst case, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do.

The price you have been quoted is very low but I can understand it can be a fortune, it is subjective. You say you can afford max 200 , tell the guy (assuming he knows what he's doing) 200 take or leave.

If you wan to "buy" something , keep in mid that is in the THOUSANDS $ range and you should know how to use it so it's not an option.

P.S. I have the feeling, after this reply , that maybe the answer will be "OK tell me what to do, I'm willing to experiment now as I don't care anymore for data" (it's a movie we see veryday on these screens ) , in that case surf these pages and the internet and happy tinkering with free stuff and with the disk.

Disk power on messages from Hyperterminal log would help.