My external hard drive died, any recourse?

Factual Questions
1

Short version: My external hard drive died, is there any way to recover anything from it?

Detailed version: I plugged my laptop charger into my external hard drive (don’t look at me that way, they look nearly identical), which made the part where I plug in the adapter spark and star smoking, now it won’t turn on. I’d assume the entire thing got shorted, not just the plug. I have some stuff on here I’d like to get back, most of the stuff I can’t recover (i.e. one-shot preorder bonuses and stuff I found on the internet that have since been taken down for various reasons). None of it is earth shattering (MY BABY’S IN THERE!), but obviously it’d be NICE if I could get some of it back. I know, shame on me for not backing it up in two places, but most of the stuff was too BIG to back up anywhere else.

So, do I have any recourse or am I screwed? I don’t mind if it costs a little bit, but bribing the NSA is right out.

2

First, the obvious… have you tried moving the actual hard drive to another external enclosure, on the off chance that only the enclosure power system was damaged (and not the drive)?

Failing that, I’ve heard of situations where people were able to replace failed drive controller circuit boards on the outside of the drives by purchasing an identical drive on eBay and soldering the new board onto the old drive. I wonder – in a power surge situation – if perhaps the short-circuit would’ve spared the actual data-containing magnetic platters and only fried the electronics on the outside?

3

There’s a decent chance the drive is fine. Get an external USB drive case ( $20-$40 typically)and give it a try.