Brad, I just happened to be watching DL.TV just now, and one of their topics was hard drive recovery. They had a segment they shot with a guy who spoke about data recovery at DEFCON. Apparently he does this much cheaper than most companies will, but he also freely shares his tips. I thought it was interesting that he claims that it's possible to recover data from 85% of failed drives.

DL.TV (episode 105)
myharddrivedied.com

Ha! I just now went to <a href="runtime.org" target="_blank">the site</a> of the software that they said he uses. Looks like it's GetDataBack! Interesting. Still, he seems to have reasonable prices. I think it's about $200 for drivest that just need software recovery.

*edit*
How is it going, by the way?