Fried Hard Drive tried lots of ideas

[jorelcuomophoto]

Hello

I am a wildlife photographer. I was silly enough not to back up a pile of my photographs from my hard drive.
I was installing a 160 GB storage hard drive into the slave in my computer. (which hasnt worked in the past) After taking it out I ran my regular hard drive and it brought me to the blue screen of death. system 32 hal.dll missing or corrupt. So after trying to re-install windows (it wanted us to re format the HD but we didnt) we took my 80 GB hard drive out and put it into another Windows Xp opperating system. It showed up as 2 drive letters 1 was the recovery, the other the drive. But the recovery was fine, but the main drive asked us to re format after we clicked on it.
Our main guess is that perhaps a spark may have hit my HD when putting both HD s in my system.

I can not afford to lose the information, nor can I afford $500 to send it away to abstract the files from my HD.

Is there a way I can get the software or is there any other way I can do this work at home and save my JPGs I have about 30GB which I need to save.
Time is not an issue, because I need it back.
I have worked with computers for 10 yrs extensivly. I have never had a hard drive fry on me before.

Does anyone have any ideas that would be able to help me?
I would be much grateful for any Ideas.

 

[zephead]

you'll have to try digging around the internet for some utilitiy software. simtel.net is a good source, but they have downsized thier network awhile back. as for your problems, there could be planty of things causing it.
btw, what are these problems you had in the past w/your system?

 

[Samstoned]

Acronis can find your files and save them as long as there not corrupted
another good program I use is file scavenger devloped by a co. that recovers info.for big corp.
I do local data recovery and the last one is the fastest and cleanest
wow I'm not charging enough
don't panic even if your drive has been formatted the programs I use can get the data back.

 

[tbrunt3]

You can try HARIENS it has a recovery program in it .. Also try knoppix wich boots form cd-rom but to do this you will need either a extra cd/r/w or a external hdd to transfer the data to..

There is also a program called Ultimate Boot CD wich also as a recovery program in it. you can get this here.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4019.html

good luck and let us know how you make out

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Try out HDD Regenerator from http://www.dposoft.net/
If the try-pgm can get some of your data back, it will most likely get all of it back in the full version ($59.95)