I've tried everything I know (software-based) to recover data from a failing drive before it completely dies and haven't been able to get anything. I've also tried the old freezing-the-drive trick (http://www.meetmyattorney.com/slink/mt-archives/000275.html) and while that did stop the clicking of doom, I still wasn't able to access it.

So now I'm considering sending the drive off to one of those specialized clean-room recovery places. Has anyone here used one of these services and can you recommend one?

[Note to OS fan-people: this is a hardware problem, not a software problem. The same drive in a Mac would have failed in the same way.]

So now I'm considering sending the drive off to one of those specialized clean-room recovery places. Has anyone here used one of these services and can you recommend one?
I hate to say it but recovery services like that are usually very expensive and they still do not guarantee that they can get the job done. The last time I used such a service was about 6 years ago for a client of mine and it was well over $1000 to start. (I wasnt paying the bill, so I did not care.)

Here (http://www.datarecovery.net/default.html)is a link to one place that will at least give you a quote... I hope the prices have gone down since the turn of the century. Shop around as it never hurts to ask for a quote.

Good luck!!

Andrew, I have used their software:

http://www.runtime.org/

It is cheap, and it worked well. Plus, you can install the trial software (on a different drive of course) and then scan the drive in question before you purchase. It will show you what it can recover, but it won't let you save the recovery in the trial version. I had a drive that was clicking, and I could not access it at all from Windows. I was able to recover the entire volume, minus some corrupted files that luckily happened to be in the "tmp" folder. Good luck.

Don't know if this was one of the software solutions you tried...but just in case it wasn't:

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Tons of people I know have had their lives saved by that program, and swear by it. I've never had need of it myself. But just thought I would pass that along.

Andrew,

I remember losing an NTFS drive at work in one of my servers (it was just a share off a non-used workstation.) Drive savers wanted $1,000 to just look at the drive. They did tell me that if it were formatted in any other file structure it would be much cheaper, considering I was having the issue NOW, it wasn't much of a consolation.

Drivesavers (http://www.drivesavers.com/) is in Novato, about an hour and twenty minutes away from the googleplex.

A friend of mine who works in an active server farm highly recommended OnTrack (http://www.ontrack.com/) he said they've been able to recover his data everytime.

Hi ya. If you have alredy tried a few software solutions with no luck may I suggest NOT to try anything else before you send it to a recovery service. The mroe you use it the less likely you are to get anything back.

I have had success in swapping out the controller boards of hard drives for simulr drives but for this to work you need a very simular (read near exact) model and now that it is the controller and not the drive motor, heads or platters themselves.

(If you are no comfortable to do this I'd suggest you send it stright on to the recovery service as it's something they will try themselves as well as other solutions.