Windows 7 - Hard Drive FAILED:( Need Help ASAP

Hi all, I am having a huge problem at the moment. I purchased a new Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 2TB hard drive (MAR 2011) a few days ago and transferred all my data to it after a few hours use including important documents and now it has stopped working, it does not spin at all. I have purchased, from the same store, another hard drive of the same model, all the firmware is the same (FM: 580) and I switched the boards but this has not made a difference...

I really need help in this matter as I will be loosing a lot of data some very important, I have not contacted the store yet as I dont want to risk someone getting access to that data. Is there any way I can recover this data? (should I try the freezer option) if not can I destroy the data so there is no chance of future recovery if I return it to the store? (put a magnet on it) Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

I would suggest contacting Tech support with your problem, they may say that the can attempt to recover your data when you RMA the drive
In the event of destroying your data a "very strong" magnet may very well work but the only sure way i know of is to take a lump hammer to the drive its self which OC you wont want to do if your planning on retuning the drive....
If you RMA back to Hitachi then they must deal with the drive and your data in the most professional manor
Im sorry i cant be of more help to you than i have but hold out and someone may very will have a solution

For future reference, the backup is not meant to be your only copy of your data...it is meant to be a copy, so if the backup fails, you still have your original data until the external can be replaced.

That being said, if you tried swapping the boards of the HDD yourself, you may have voided your warranty with Hitachi. They also don't warranty data, just the drives, so if you really need what is stored on those drives, and you can't get it working with the freezer trick, you may be looking at thousands of dollars from a recovery company.

Have you tried the drive without the external portion...as in connecting it to a computer as an internal drive?