As far as what sort of steps would be usual for recovery, a lot of it would depend on the nature of the drive failure. If the drive is damaged enough that dire

As far as what sort of steps would be usual for recovery, a lot of it would depend on the nature of the drive failure. If the drive is damaged enough that directory information and the MFT are missing, there are certainly situations in which it would make sense to run TestDisk and PhotoRec, which are freely available and widely included in data recovery builds. It's been a long time since I needed to use PhotoRec (and I've learned a lot more since), but my recollection from the time is that it basically goes chugging through the disk looking for sectors that contain the beginning of a recognized file format, then starts pulling that off until it reaches an end or another file beginning operating on the hope that at least some files will have been stored contiguously on the drive. By the time you get to PhotoRec there's a good chance you've given up on just being able to get back to regular filesystem access. As a side note for anyone contemplating drive recovery without pro tools, the ABSOLUTE FIRST thing to do is image the drive into a file (probably with ddrescue). NEVER use these tools on the original drive if there's data on there that you value, and if there's data that you REALLY value, consider sending it to a professional that's also able to do a clean-room evaluation (which usually won't be required). Some places are absurdly expensive, but a lot of recoveries will only cost a few hundred dollars. "Yep, all your data's still in the drive. After your freezing/spinning/whacking recovery efforts, most of it's in that fine grey dust in the filter."