Replace Circuit Board, Fix Drive?

I have a Seagate Barracuda, Model ST380021A in which I have a ton of important information, family pics, etc.

For some reason it got to the point where if it was connected to the computer when it was powered on or restarted, the computer would freeze and windows would not load. The only work around I came up with was to unplug the power from the hard drive upon booting up, and once safely into Windows I would re-attach the power to the drive and everything would be fine. UNTIL one time when doing this, the wrong prongs between the molex connector and the hard drive touched. Since then I have not been able to get the drive to power on.


If I were to buy the same hard drive, and just switch the circuit boards, what is everyone's opinion on whether the drive might work again or would I be wasting money?

I found 1 on ebay that was the same exact model and firmware for $34 w/shipping. As important as this drive is, I figure that for $34, even it doesnt work, it's worth a shot. I'll post results once it arrives.

Unfortunately.... Nope, no backups =/

I received the new drive in the mail the other day. I hooked it up to my computer to make sure it worked and everything worked great. So I proceeded to switch the board from the new HD to my old HD.
Hooked it all up, powered on etc etc, and happily I could hear the drive spinning. Not so fast though. Its not being recognized! Hoping I could do like I've done in the past with other drives, I connected it to my IDE to USB device. Yet STILL I cant get it recognized! So basically im at a point where I've run out of ideas for now.