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No noises is a wonderful non-symptom. You'll probably get everything back.
Best not to keep experimenting. Depending on the problem you can do additional damage. It can be educational to play with a junk drive but given the value of your data you should pass it off to a good shop.
Someone big like Drivesavers will charge ~$40-60/GB, billed by drive size. You don't get a break if all they had to do was swap controllers. You're paying for their experience in knowing each drive and which parts can be safely swapped, how to do it carefully, and for deeper analysis if it's necessary. I often recover drives but on a best-effort basis - no promisies. Your description tells me you should pay for the experience. Get the drive model and serial numbers. Call around and get bids.
Not that it helps right now, but each week that passes usually eases the burden. People often find alternative ways to get their data - peers, email history, old students? Put the drive in a safe place in case you later need professional recovery for an audit.
Good luck!
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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195
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