How to save a dying hard drive?

A friend of mine is searching for someone capable of salvaging a portable hard drive. It took a tumble from a height of about eight inches, and now the computer fails to recognize it entirely. The indicator light still functions, and it's a standard 2.5'' drive. A local repair shop gave him a quote for $100 the repair, but I was wondering if anyone here possesses the technical expertise to fix this for a more reasonable fee and successfully recover the data.

If we're looking at a PATA hard drive, you might be able to pull the 2.5" drive right out of the enclosure. If you open up the case and use an adapter to plug it directly into a 3.5" connection on your PC, you could probably try to recover the data. 🙂

Adapter: