jsonthegreat said (1-Oct-2015, 12:02 PM):
My house was hit by a lightning strike which fried my computer AND my backup drive.

I’m a little late to this thread, but … wow! Count your blessings on what else might have happened but didn’t.

Your hard drive may still be salvageable. It’s only the electronics that were fried, not necessarily damage to the platens, too. It may be worth a gamble & the expense to have the drive platens physically moved into the working case of an identical drive (same make/model/controller-chip) in a “clean room”, of course.