How do I recover data from a mechanically defective hard drive?

I have a maxtor external hard drive which apparently was physically damaged. I think the circut board went on the blink. When I plug it in the center of the board becomes real hot and then starts to smoke. It is here I have all back up business data. How can I retrieve this data on the drive? I know it can be done because they do it all the time in criminal cases. Can I put a new circut board on the drive?How do I recover data from a mechanically defective hard drive?
switching the IDE board on the drive, with the EXACT same model, size etc, you would be able to recover the data.


If this isn't an option, then you could find a local data recovery agencyHow do I recover data from a mechanically defective hard drive?
Then I wouldn't be plugging it in.





If it's an external drive and it is the circuit on the case not the drive that is getting hot and smoking then taking the drive itself out and putting it inside a computer might help (or might destroy the computer you put it into, though I think that's unlikely) and then hopefully you can copy something across.





In criminal cases they pay data recovery agencies to recover the data and whilst they can often get the data off the drive they charge you a lot of money for the service (though the good ones at least won't charge you if they can't get anything). To put a new circuit board on the drive you'd need to get a board from the exact same model drive which is going to be hard to do, a data recovery service could do it for you if you've got the cash to spare and really need that data.





In future you'd be better off just storing anything that you can't afford to lose in at least two places, backups are a lot cheaper than data recovery services.