Help with Data recovery on HDD - WD1200JB-75CRA0

[bigpapagotti]

I have a hard drive that has stopped working and would like to get it repaired in order to recover that data. The hard drive quit working one day and I received the BSoD INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_VOLUME in windows when trying to boot. I removed the HDD from my computer and hooked it up to a "Hard Drive to USB Cable Adapter" but the drive does not show up in Windows. I tried in Ubuntu as well with no luck.

I can hear the hard drive turn on/spin up with only a single click in the beginning and no more clicks occur and the drive continues to run, but never shows up in Disk Management or Windows Explorer when connected to the USB Adapter.

I have put the HDD back into the computer and booted from a WD Diagnostic CD and the HDD is recognized and I can see the Model, SN, Firmware information but the Quick test never actually starts to run (I may have not waited long enough)

What would the HDDGuru's advise me to do? I looked into a replacement PCB to see if this will resolve my issue but I have my doubts as to whether or not this will actually resolve my issue. I'm also a bit skeptical in getting the ROM chip moved to the new PCB board as I only have a hot air gun (from the body shop) http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-491/Heat-Guns/Deluxe-Heat-Gun

Below is the information on my HDD as well as a link to a replacement PCB I am thinking about purchasing.
Model: WD1200JB-75CRA0
Date: 16 Dec 2002
Firmware: 16.06V16
S/N: WD-WMA8C3361050
PCB: 2060-001102-003 Rev. A
PCB Sticker: 2061-001102-301 C
http://www.donordrives.com/wd-120gb-wd1200jb-75cra0-2061-001102-301-c-ide-3-5-pcb.html
Please let me know if you need any more information. I look forward to hearing what everyone recommends/has to say

[bigpapagotti]

First off, thank you very much for the detailed response. Your links have been very helpful in allowing me to progress forward with getting this data recovered.

I was able to do a SCAN using MHDD. The drive was recognized properly up and the drive began to scan. I did not actually let the entire SCAN process complete, but once it started I decided to stop it and begin to try cloning the drive using ddrescue.

I think that I MAY be encountering the slow copy speed. I am averaging 1485 kB/s and have 22676MB "rescued" so far. Do you think that I should perform the slow fix to the drive? or should I just let the current clone continue at the rate that it is going?

Again thank you for your help!

[bigpapagotti]

Just wanted to provide you with a quick update. I was unable to perform the firmware fix because of errors I kept receiving when trying to read the firmware as well as use the WD Marvel utility.

I resorted back to the painfully slow process of ddrescue chipping away at the clone. After several days of it running it finally complete and I am not going through the process of recovering the data. I was actually able to plug the drive back into the computer and boot from it. I am manually copying the data now so I am hoping that I will be in good shape.

Thanks a lot for your help, without your guidance I would not have been able to recover this data successfully.