My advice is to stop thinking about saving the hardware, and focus on how important the data is to you, in terms of $$. If the hardware happens to work when you're done, don't use it for anything you care about.
The answers to most of the questions you're now asking are easy google searches. You'll find that PC3000 and MRT Lab are both expensive pieces of software, north of $5000 each....I don't even have to do a search to tell you that.
As for "they", I suspect they did exactly what you asked for (save this ROM), not what you really wanted (save this drive). And now you're a squeaky wheel they don't want to deal with anymore. Can't blame them.
So what do you recommend at this point?
So what do you recommend at this point?
One of the following, depending on your budget and how valuable the data is to you:
1. Hire a professional data recovery service to recover the data.
2. Locate an identical working drive and try swapping the boards, maybe you will get lucky and that will allow you to read back at least most of the data.
3. Give up, write off the data as a lost cause, put the drive away in a drawer somewhere in case you later change your mind, and use it as a reminder to make frequent backups of important data.
Sorry I've never had a need for such a service so I don't have a recommendation. Perhaps somebody else here does have some direct experience.
Have you considered something like this?
I mean, at some point very soon you might have to really give a hard think to the actual final value you place on this data.
Then find a place that will charge you less than that and give you your data on a new drive.
If the value you place on the data is less than the price of a new drive plus a new donor drive to use as parts and then a realistic amount for the time required to get the data from a drive which is effectively dead at this point then just give up and save your time.
I know that generally at Rossman for example there is a flat fee of $250 for board level repairs, I imagine hard drive recovery is more than that. The minimum I would guess is the price of two drives plus $250.
Relevant to your situation:
Here, Steve explains why he doesn't replace the PCB to solve the problem with a drive that was sent in requesting PCB replacement. As is almost always the case, the problem the customer thinks they have, is not the problem they actually have.
After watching part 2 of the second video it seems likely that the donor board you put into the drive did not have the correct micro-stepping values and that it is unlikely for a random donor board to work.