replacing my PC and data recovery

[theboyfold]

Seems like the PC at home is starting to feel it's age (Only 4 years!!) things seem the be breaking and falling off.

My main hard drive has died and taken all it's data with it, which is a major ball ache. So does anybody know any decent software (freeware ideally) that will look at a hard drive and try and pull data off of it. Or should I try PC World who want £100 for data recovery. Or spend £200 plus (don't really have this sort of money kicking around at the moment and not sure the data is worth it) to send the HDD off to a specialist.

Also, I think it's time to look into replacing the motherboard as half of my SATA connections don't work and other issues are a-comin... So, what is the best value/performance package for a motherboard and CPU combo. I like the look of this one at the moment http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage?MBB-C2... I'll be using the PC for adobe packages (Photoshop, Premier and After Effects, but not to the highest level, I understand a lot of this is GPU dependent) Also general net, email and iTunes work.

[LordLanky]

theboyfold said:

Or should I try PC World who want £100 for data recovery. Or spend £200 plus (don't really have this sort of money kicking around at the moment and not sure the data is worth it) to send the HDD off to a specialist.

Speak to my mate Doc here: Brody.org.uk
Tell him LordLanky sent yer and he should charge less than a 1-er... usually only charges if can recover the data....!