I bought a SATA western digital caviar SE 1600AAJS.At that time I had a mobo that didn't support SATA (I was planning to change mobo so I didn't buy a PATA HDD) so I bought an usb adapter and worked fine.At that disk I had my torrent downloading folder so the disk was constantly active.One morning I woke up and I saw a yellow triangle in the tray area with a notification balloon.I don't remember exactly what it was written but the general idea was that there may be a data loss because some operation didn't took place on time or something.....

The partitions disappeared and there was only unallocated space, I tried both windows and bootable rescue software but nothing-one of them was showing ony 10% of health!!!And there where MANY bad sectors.Now I power it on but it doesn't even spin up and the circuit plate underneath just gets hot.
What on earth caused it?
The adapter,maybe the "overusage" ---(I don't think I did such thing but anyway!!!)or just a faulty disk?
I don't care about the disk, but the data is valuable, old pics of family, friends and such that are not backed up.....
Any ideas??????????? I want just to save the data if possible....I know that I can send it to Western Digital but I'm searching for an alternative because I may be unaware of something that another person, more experienced, does.
Thanks in advance...