My reply is as much for any PC user as it is for Dave here.

At the company where I retired, I worked in Information Systems for several years. Out of about 350 on-site users inevitably, at least one person each year would give just about anything to get it all back (while I was trying my best to find a solution for them, I'm almost certain that there were lots of cigarettes, coffee and fingernail-biting that day). So, while I don't know how desperate your situation is, just in case you plug it in and find nothing (that is no lights, no noise, no spin-up, PC doesn't see it, etc) ...

There are companies (in the USA I know for certain) that for a certain fee can remove the platters from the internal drive cage and they'll typically get a very large majority of it back (sometimes all of it). Some of these companies will even ship it back to you on a new drive and guarantee it. I personally used three of these companies; CompUSA and Circuit City in Detroit, Michigan and Champion Computer in Boca Raton, Florida).

I know this can sound like a pricey proposition (and it can be), but sometimes compared to the investment in time you have on the files that were on the drive, you might find yourself without options (assuming you have no backups of course). In one case in particular, one of our mechanical engineers lost about two years of CAD drawings off a PC (his personal laptop PC he used between work and home). This happened at least ten years ago and at that time, my company was without options and paid a hefty $12,000+ dollars to retrieve those drawing files. Believe it or not, he kept his job.

Not good news I'm afraid, but it happens to plenty of people who I know that have tossed the drive in the garbage without ever considering their options. I know that as is the case with business machines, the data can easily exceed the value of your total hardware and software expense. And sometimes it costs people their jobs -- While not something you see every day, it did happen once at my company that I'm aware of.

Good luck to you.

Ike