I wanted to give some conclusion to this discussion. I received this drive from the client yesterday and here is what i figured out about the drive. She gave me authorization to post about it

It had been to three different places before i saw it. Local IT company, Ontrack, and Drivesavers

The first place is the place i believe caused the drive to be unrecoverable, since i would like to think that Ontrack and Drivesavers would not do such awful job with this.

Company one is a local IT company near the client.

1. Top label was completely peeled off. It was a Seagate drive, but model number and p/n was unknown at this point.
2. 1tb drive, standard laptop size, 2 platters
3. Drive was missing Screw that held the heads in underneath.
4. Once the drive was opened, i noticed that the reading heads were mangled, but the way they were mangled was not done by the drive on failure. More likely they did not care when they put them back in.
5. Dust particles on the platters
6. Platter screw that holds the platters in place was loose, and a little stripped, the platters were not secured in, and moving independently.
7. There was a Sharpie mark on the edges of the two platters to most likely keep them in alignment when they were removed. They are were not even aligned with each other at this point. Sharpie marks not lined up.

I am assuming that drivesaver and Ontrack came up with the same conclusion and realized that since the platters were removed in non-aligned way they deemed it unrecoverable. it was not even put back together correctly to keep the platters from moving.

Sometimes a corrupt jpeg is the result of an "improperly formatted" or "mis-placed" pixel - to use layman's terms. Oftentimes one has to repair just 1 single pixel and the rest of the image magically appears.