[Volt]

First off - sorry for the issues. As an IT guy here who has had to look at data recovery before, most warranties cover the hardware not the recovery. With that said, once you send it in, it's prolly done. Data recovery by experts is incredibly expensive, so much so my company will not pay for it (prior to my arrival). Think $1000s.00.

1. Regardless as to what you do, have another drive ready to recieve the data if you can get it to spin. You may only get one shot and it needs to be fast.

2. You can try freezing, but if you smelled burnt components - I'm gonna bet it's done. Even if you could replace them, you would need to determine whether the part failed or it was due to another issue.

3. If it is worth $300 to fix and you like to tinker. Buy the exact same drive. Yank the electronics out (destroys this drive) ($100). Put them in the old drive (voiding the old warranty $100)) and see if it will spin up. Have a new drive ready to recieve the data if it works ($100). Absolutly a 1 time shot and with the heads and platters so snsitive to dust once opened?????? Good project if you have the time. $300 might be cheap depending on the value of the data you have lost at this point.

4. Try the data recovery route as posted above.

I can't think of much else if it will not spin. If the hardware was functional there are many ways to get data, but is has to spin.

Not to toss salt in your wounds, but a general note to all who do not backup. In this day and age there is no reason not to have a backup device. Threre are some external drives so customized all they do is back up, just point, click the installed software and forget. For the minor geeks, setup a RAID 1 (I use both). There is just no reason not to protect what ever is important other than laziness.