Hi Awsome Humanoid.
The manual recovery, the one that recovers the previous status of your hard drive after a black out damages the partition of the Master File Table (MFT), a collision of software occurs, or when a virus corrupts the integrity of system files it's not possible by using the command line since the hard drive it's not being recognized.
Use Get Data Back, Recover My files or Winhex. the first two will recover the same structure of your hard disk but you have to copy its content into another hard drive, they don't repair the operative system so you can use your computer as usual, it doesn't work like that. Besides, even if Recover My Files usually does that, i don't advise that since your hard disk could have damaged sectors and the best policy is always to transfer the content to a new storage device so the disk don't keeps self damaging along with your precious data.
Get Data Back can recover 80 GB of data in 30 minutes to 60 minutes, depending on the health of your hard disk.
You say it is not recognized, but your expert has to try in another machine with good amperage because it's usual that molex cables shrink with time or your power supply it's not providing enough power as it when was new and the hard disk maybe it's not getting enough power, specially if you have plugged a new fan, USB device or any other hard disk or electric device that could be draining all the capacity of your power supply leaving that hard disk with nothing. A good provision of electric power sometimes gives the extra strength to hard disks that seem to be damaged, but be careful, you must have all the right software before the circuitry warms excessively again and before the motor dies definitely.
Try both of you if he is working in your house of do it by yourself to connect the unrecognized hard disk alone, if its memory, microcontrollers and its main contoller its like in 60 °C then the Circuit Board it's burned, but there is the possibility to save the data easily if the hard disk has not damaged its motor and it's not making a sound like a clock, which it's the sound of a writing arm broken. Even that your data can be saved. the writing arm or head can be replaced by an expert.
Your expert can use a Circuit Board of the same kind of disk or use a universal one to recover your data.
If there is some physycal damage in the surface of the disks, it's caused by the head of the writing arm making contact with those, so don't expect a hundred percent of the content to be available. If the motor is dead, either by a lose ball from the ball bearing system, by a dead magnet or magnets (not so likely unless the disk it's old, since those motors using magnets are a little more expensive) or a broken coil caused by a power surge which causes high temperature or by a hot environment.
The extent of the damage can be from almost nothing to a 50% or more but there's always chances to recover valuable data. And the chances are given by the number of disks, if your data was in one disk that had no contact with the arm, either by heat or a hit, your chances rise to a 100% of getting it all. Much more if your disk just stopped from working without any previous warning from your Operative System or a software like Hard Disk Sentinel, if both never warned and you did nothing more than working normally with that disk, it's very likely that it has all its content intact, even if Hard Disk Regenerator tried to reallocate the files by using its own set of MFT, the software i mentioned remap the hard disk and recover data even after those situations.
Said all that lets evaluate the software that we have at hand:
*HDD Regenerator.- It's a Russian recovery software based on the restoring capability. It won't interprete or copy files by default as others, this is a fixing software for errors in data based on the physics of magnetic states. It means it will change the state of data it considers wrong. Typically to its previous state.
It does not rely on MFT correction. If damaged sectors appeared in the process, don't blame the technician, it could have happened with other software and it's proof that the writing head is touching the surface of your hard disk and creating debris which cause more and more damaged sectors, which normally never happens.
The more you try to read the disk the more it damages. It's counterpart exists in the US.
*Recover My Files.- It's for beginners. Excellent software with fast recovery of data and few steps to make it work.
*Get Data Back.- A good option for average to for advanced users, you can do it but there are many technical questions the program tells you that could overwhelm you and even make a mistake. It doesn't erase your data but i have seen many times that software to hang so one has to reset the computer and every time you do so your are increasing the chances of corrupting more data.
*Winhex.- The selection of IT experts to Forensics. It's the most advanced and complete. It's a German software used in criminal trials because recovers data not only in the last state a hard disk was or from a previous layers or installations, in order to get at list a string (word) of data to incriminate someone. It depends on the configuration. When it does the full scan which it's related to the recovery of most types of files, it may take 4, 8 hours to do the job. It's the only one who performs extensive scanning read every sector in your hard disk which will make your system look like hanging but don't interrupt its working because it won't stop as others.
If the disk is too damaged or the actuator arm is broken (writing arm) it will show a long chain of messages of unreadable sector. Sometimes you can stop after seeing that or not, it depends on the level of skill of your technician. But it could help to use a cap in the selector of size in the back on the hard disk to limit the scan to the half with the intention of scanning the good part of your disk, if it has several plates and several writing heads, that really works sometimes.
This one indexes good files and deleted files (if those are too overwritten) which makes a comprehensible task to get only the data you miss the most which is the previous to the moment of failure.
Cheers.