Originally Posted by Black Foci

If the hard drive is fried, then you got no chance of recovering files from it, unless you have got the skills and tools to take out the ceramic disc inside that contains all the data. and also if you had a password on it, it could prove to be quite tricky. If there was no password on it, and its not the actual hard drive thats fried, the cheapest and easiest option would be to get a portable 2.5" hard drive caddy, which can take the harddrive, and plug into another pc/laptop, and extract the files. Just be aware that some caddys can only take up to a certain size hard drive, and also some laptop hard drive caddys will not connect to a pc, only other laptops (could probarbly be fixed with updated drivers). You can pick up 2.5" caddys for £3 or £4 plus postage from fleebay.