Quote Originally Posted by jrandom View Post
I'd imagine that you should be able to send the drive back to the manufacturer for servicing and a controller PCB replacement.

What brand is the drive?
Quote Originally Posted by Winter View Post
Its a Western Digital.

Does that mean I'll have to send it somewhere western America? eesh.
No. The closest authorized Western Digital recovery partner is in Aussie.
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com.au/

There are other companies in NZ that do data recovery but arnt authrised WD agents. They should still be able to do it thou.
http://www.dtidata.co.nz/
http://datarecovery.co.nz/capabilities-hdd.html

Quote Originally Posted by devnull View Post
You could always buy another drive of the same type and swap the controllers cards over
You have to get the exact same model drive for this to work. If the drive isnt damn near brand new your probably SoL with this method.

What it comes down too is how much do you want that data back? Are the photos priceless? Because any sort of professional data recovery is likely to start at about NZD$1000