How to recover important data in a defective or dead SATA Hard disk drive?

[integer]

Hello guys.. !
Please lend me a helping hand in recovering IMPORTANT data in my seagate barracuda 7200.12 (1TB).

This is my case:
Yesterday my pc works fine with the said hard disk until i cleaned the inside of its case. before cleaning, i removed all cables (power cable, mouse, keyboard, speaker, LAN, VGA. afterwards, to check whether the noise has been already removed or not i plugged the power cable ONLY and not other cables because of the narrow space available and the idea of a power interruption about to come in minutes. i have had 4 times of rebooting through the power button during the cleaning. (held the power button 3-5 secs to shutdown the comp). Later on when done with the cleaning, i put back the cables of the rear panel but then after showing the motherboard details in the monitor it never displayed the OS logo (windows XP) instead this: "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key"

I tried pulling out the hard disk and inserted it in another desktop pc but same message displayed. But when i insert the other pc's hard disk in the cleaned pc it works fine. I also tried switching the sata cables to 2-4 but still it cannot be detected by the bios. the DVD drive stays detected and works fine even if i switch it in other sata controller (1-4) it can be detected like the hard disk i'd tried from other desktop pc. i also tried connecting the defective hard disk in all sata controllers (1-4) and even switched working and fine power sata cables with no good but in the other hard disk all controllers work fine as well as sata power cables.

Moreover i cant feel the slight vibration of the other hard disk which I compared the defective hard disk from.

Bios: Not detected
Bios Boot Sequence:
1)Hard Drive
2)DVD
3)Removable

the defective sata hard disk has the following specs:
name: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
size: 1TB
P/N: 9SL154-302
S/N: 9VP484ZS
Firmware: CC38
age: about 1-2yrs old
OS: Windows XP SP2

System: Asus mobo
Mem: 2GB

My questions are:
Is my hard disk dead?
If so, how can i recover my IMPORTANT data in it. Yes it's very important.

Helping hand much appreciated
Thank you very much in advance

 

[Silverhazesurfer]

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Download the Seagate tools for DOS from the above link. Run all tests listed when it boots. It will tell you what is wrong with the drive.

You should hear the drive spin up upon power on of the machine. If the disk does not power up, probably nothing can be done. If the drive is not detected by the BIOS, probably nothing can be done. If the drive is under warranty, you could attempt to have it repaired but a manufacturer will not guarantee that your data will be available after that. If your drive is out of warranty, you could attempt to locate someone to perform the repair on the drive. It most likely will not be cheap as the requirements for an environment to repair a mechanical disk are very tight. Dust free and what not.

 

[muckshifter]

I concur with Silverhazesurfer ... but I fear your HD is dead.

If the data is of great importance, I suggest contacting one of the many hard drive data recovery companies that can be found on the tintereweb. They not cheap and will not guarantee recovery.