quote:
would it literally have to be an identical drive for me to be able to do that myself?
The simple answer is yes, it does. Some substitutions between same series drives of different capacities may work, but if you are going to buy a drive to try this, look for an identical one.
quote:
the data is mostly priceless and irrecoverable
I think you will change your mind about that when you get your professional recovery quote. It won't surprise me if it's a 4-digit figure.
Not to make you feel worse, but rather to point out a valuable lesson for anyone reading this thread -- if the data was even remotely valuable, let alone "priceless", WHY is it that you don't have a backup? WHY is it that you didn't at least have RAID redundancy? Hard drives fail even without someone plugging in the wrong power supply.
I work in IT and see this all the time -- home users' data is always "priceless" after their drive dies (but usually only until they find out how much it will cost to recover). Before that happens, it's not just less than priceless, but not worth a hundred bucks for a second drive in a RAID-1, nor any of the owner's time to be proactive about it and back it up.
