What do you do when you have a dead drive with data that you really, REALLY need to recover? Well, you can either send the drive to a data recovery outfit and spend lottabucks, or you can take the approach of the hardware hacker, and find another drive in your junk pile that is similar enough to swap platters.
Read how I do this on the Front Page:
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/content/view/2490/1/