Hard Disk data recovery: hardware repair

[nonstandard]

I have a pal with a WD hard disk (2 yr old, 1TB) from a WD 3.5" enclosure, which doesn't spin up. The enclosure is unlikely to be at fault, since the drive doesn't spin up when connected to a different PSU/SATA controller. In an attempt to recover this guy's data, I'm planning to buy a HDD with the same model # and attempt to replace the PCB on the bottom of the drive, hoping that this will allow the drive to power up, work normally and get the data recovered. Anyone on here done this themselves, successfully or otherwise, have any pointers or advice to offer?

[GoNz0]

thats what most data recovery companies charge you £200 for

[Splash]

thats what most shonky data recovery companies charge you £200 for

ftfy

[GoNz0]

the shonky ones charge you £200 then tell you they have done all they can but they know a company that can get it for £500

[Splash]

In a nutshell

Essentially if dealing with a data recovery company I want to know that they have a decent track record and a clean room, not one of these hundreds that seem to operate out of the back of corner shops.

As for the OP - I've done it before on 3 disks, managed to get one working for long enough to pull data, but then binned the disk. It essentially comes down to how valuable the data is (and bear in mind that tinkering with it may actually make final data recovery harder: for example if it was something that I had at home but wasn't in my backup schedule I might be tempted to give it a whirl if I could pick up a cheap working disk, but if it had all of my photos on form the last 5 years and I was a semi-pro snapper I'd be headed straight to Disklabs or similar).