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Seriously, I had a little too much coffee today, so don't take serious about #1 and 2, since I could be able to help ya out with my similar experience.
The few other options you could considers:
1. Gripes, cries, bawl all you wants over a 40 gig hard drive. When you're done, consider your lesson learned about backing up your datas to external hard drive, or using the compact discs/media cards in timely basis. Now when you learned your lesson, buy the new drive and moves on.
2. Considers the expensive option by establishing the communication with the data recovery experts in company, and expect your wallet prepping for the long flights with your credit cards. You should expects a few digits of hundred, or probably thousands to recover a part of your valuable datas.
3. Considers the cheaper option by ordering a same I/O board for your hard drive, it's very good chance that one part of your logic board blew after surpassing the hours of operation. It should set you back about 50 bucks or less, and the reliable source to find it is at ebay.
You can type your information of your hard drive here, and I can help you to find the appropriate logic board to give your hard drive another try to recover your datas.
Also, If you have camera and know how to use Marco setting, this would be very helpful to support your thread
First thing to do is to list your spec, by looking at this similar label, you will need to type Model; and numbers/letters under the three barcodes.
Take a look at this picture for reference.
The next thing is to find the logic board matching to your hard drive. Look for the white label on the bar of IDE plug bottom, it need to match with your HDD label revisions, and the final thing is to match your chip with your old/broken logic chip.
Take a look at here.
Good luck man and looking forward to help ya out.
