Data Recovery

[Topgun]

The HDD in my friend's laptop has recently died and naturally he is almost in tears having lost all his photos and coursework which needs to be submitted this week for his degree! Is there any data recovery software/hardware that can be used to recover data from drives that the BIOS cannot detect? I think the electronics are fried because the drive cannot be detected in his laptop or mine. I have an adapter on the way which will allow me to connect it to my desktop pc. Any thoughts (aside from sending it to a specialist)? The drive in question ins a 40gb IBM travelstar.

edit: was meant for general hardware

 

[Topgun]

Thanks for the advice. I've decided to get another 40gb travelstar and attempt to transplant the IDE interface. Worst case i can just use the new travelstar to replace the faulty one. Err perhaps the real worst case is damaging both drives irreparably but it seems likea chance worth taking.