File recovery

I'm wondering if anyone can help me on this one. I have a dead Hitachi laptop SATA drive which was working one day then wouldn't power up at all the next. I've found an identical model number drive and installed the new power board to the old drive to hopefully recover the data.The drive is powering up now but cant be detected by any pc Ive tried it on.Is there another step I can take before giving in and sending it to a costly file recovery co? Any help would be appreciated.

There sure is another step. I use an External USB HD Enclosure which costs about $40. They have them for IDE and SATA drives. You can order one from tigerdirect.com

Put the drive into the enclosure and connect it to another PC. Open my computer and click on the drive. It will be the next drive in line. Copy your files.

Thanks for the reply but I tried that and it still isn't being detected even though its powering.

Did you already have one of those external HD enclosures? If so, what's the make and model of it?

A technician friend of mine tried it with his. Don't know the make and model. He also tried one of those usb cables which read all hdd.

Well, if he couldn't get it to work with one of those external enclosures, there isn't much you can do other than pay someone to dismantle the HD and read it with expensive machinery.