My 5 1/2 yr old internal HDD is dying. A week ago it started refusing to boot, so I took it out, put it in a working computer and ran a scan. The scan failed to complete due to "too many bad sectors", which I gather is a preeetty bad sign. I've bought a replacement drive and have kept the problem drive unplugged, but unfortunately (because I am very very dumb ) I don't have any backups of the data that was on it, which includes all my TS2/TS3 files, including a rather sizeable CC collection accumulated over nearly 10 years. Obviously I'd really like to retrieve as much as possible from the drive, however much that turns out to be.

So I'm looking for advice as to which of the many data recovery software options would be the best at saving me from my own stupidity, and which I should avoid. Any other relevant tips and/or tricks would be also greatly appreciated.