Notebook HD dead - Help me recover some data?!?

[inssane]

HP Pavillion DV4T.
Original HD replaced under warranty 8 months ago for beginning to fail.
This replacement is now done.
Bootloader error blue screen!

Windows 7 - the recovery function won't load up and it goes to blue screen if I boot normally.
Mem test was OK
HD test FAILED Replace HD 1
SMART test PASSED

Right now I am just stunned/upset. Screw music and settings, but I have irreplaceable pics on the HD that I recently moved off of SD card and didn't get it to my external yet!!

Please help me troubleshoot - don't get me started on HP they are being rediculous about NOT helping me.

I will take whatever suggestions are recommended. I just want to recover some data - transfer it out and then I can replace the drive.
THANKS
Nick

 

[Tangent]

First thing, get an adapter or a dock you can put the hard drive in that hooks up to another PC via USB and see if you can access anything that way. If not, and it's a hardware failure, place the drive in a ziplock bag, and put it in the freezer for a while. When it's good and cold, put it back in the dock and try again. You'll only have a limited amount of time if it works at all, so be ready to copy the files you want. If that doesn't work, I'm afraid your only realistic options for recovering the files are going to be a professional data recovery service which can replace electronics or swap the platter into another drive which is stupid expensive. Or at least it used to be...


http://www.diskdoctors.com/data-recovery.asp

The recovery cost for a single hard disk drive can run a wide range (anything from $350 to $3000 depending upon the nature of problem)

That's way cheaper than it used to be at least. I remember it being $100/Meg of HDD capacity...

 

[mrspeedmaster]

This is my recovery procedure. Only and only if the drive can still spin.

1) Connect drive to external dock
2) Run Clonezilla on Linux to a cloned drive. I do sector by sector copy

3) Try to restore from cloned drive on a macintosh using PhotoRec.
This will go sector-by-sector and retrieve any files (per your specification) and write to a secondary drive/mount

If #3 fails, then I try to restore from the dead drive.
4) Rebuild partition table mappings using TestDisk on Linux/OSX.

I've recovered a dozen drives this way. Recovery places were charging $3500-$7,000.


Google: Photorec, testdisk