Before you give up, why not try to take it to a computer guy/firm to see if it can be saved. It might be worthwhile. I had my internal hard drive go down and my computer guy fixed it, have me a new drive, and a backup hard drive for a very reasonable price. Plus, he saved all of the data and believe me, I thought it was all gone, too. Just a thought. You're in Maryland and I'm in Pennsylvania, but my computer guy works really cheap -- it might be worth calling him to help, even if you had to ship the drive up to him. Let me know if you want his number. Take care.
