dead hd

If as you say, the laptop was powered and running when it wnt in the drink, there would have been an almighty SHORT and with that there would have been an instant denial of power.

At the point that the power stopped, the heads which would've been happily floating on a cushion of air would've instantly crashed onto the surface of the platters, doing untold damage to the magnetic surface.

So, irrespective of whether the hard drive case is waterproof (which I doubt - the little holes that the mounting screws go into aren't waterproof!) the inside of the drive will resemble something akin to a warzone if you are lucky.

You can attempt to swap out the controller board but that's as far as you can go. If that doesn't produce any benefit, you'll have to despatch the drive to a Data Recovery unit for forensic recovery.

Don't forget, this is [b]SEA WATER[/b] that we're talking about here - every minute that you swither about what you might or might not do, the corrosive effect of the rock salt is eating further and further into anything that takes it's fancy - including the aluminium platters that form the data surfaces of your hard drive. :(

The Data recovered is a different story.

The simple answer is Most Likely no there is no way for you to recover the data personally. You can however send the HDD to a Data recovery Specialist like On Track who can dismantle the HDD and read directly from the platters with their equipment. This comes at a cost however and the more you do now to mess up the Drive the more expensive the recovery will be as whoever you end up sending the drive to will need to spend more time to recover your Data so you get to pay for the extra effort involved.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

The only reason I suggest On Track is because of their previous record of successful recovery they are the best that I have ever dealt with and very professional. ;)

Col