Has anyone here ever used a data recovery service?

If so... any recommendations?   
 
The external drive that stores all my Kontakt libraries, plugin installers, and other misc backups started clicking sometime over the weekend which I just (unfortunately) noticed this morning.   I've since turned the enclosure off, but since this is the first time I've had this type of failure I'm starting at ground zero.  The data on the drive isn't "business critical" per se, but sure would a PITA to recreate, not that I even remember exactly everything that was on there.   And no... no backups for this drive.  Hindsight and all.
 

I bought R-Studio to recover a failed drive once.  Worked great for $50 or so.  This was shortly before adding a backup drive and scheduled data backups to my wife's PC 
 
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/
 
 

Thanks, Bob.    I will also have a look at that one - I don't think I've come across it before.   I'm not sure if software alone will cover it, but this experience is certainly opening the door for everything surrounding the topic. 
 
 

What brand/model is the drive you have?

 
stevec, is your hard drive just clicking and still working, or is it completely dead ?
 
If dead, are you sure the problem is mechanical ?  I seem to recall Craig Anderton mentioning he once swapped the circuitry from a good identical drive into a bad one to enable reading off its contents.  That shouldn't be too difficult.
 

Many years ago I did use a data recovery service for a business problem - unfortunately we had exactly the same experience as Bob's Vet did!! Yes they got much of the data back, but it was in such a mess that it was virtually unusable.
Needless to say that both business wise and personally I am now very anal re backups!!!!!!!!
Nigel
 

HDDs are all similar in that the media is an optical flat (incredibly smooth), so if the heads come to rest on them they can actually stick (called stiction). The media is coated with an oil, so it can cause this to be even worse. Heads actually "fly" 1-2 micro-inches from the surface of the media and in the days of old, the parking area was on the inner region which was purposefully pitted with a laser to make it not smooth (reduce stiction). Nowadays the arms are actually parked up a physical ramp which is driven by a capacitor in the event of a power failure to keep the heads from ever touching the media.
 
Depending on the year/model, the failure cause by stiction can actually rip the head off the arm (worst failure there is), since the head cannot achieve flight without the disk spinning, but there are several other less destructive modes of failure. If the media is not scratched from a failure, the data can be recovered, but the drive cannot be powered on if not reading (since it can potentially scratch more). With newer heads (MR technology), a head bumping the disk can cause a thermal spike (thermal asperity) which can cause it not to read properly for a few seconds... or actually rip/damage the write head itself. From a read perspective, neither with promote "disk failure" and the head may still be capable of reading.
 
Most drives will show degradation rather than catastrophic failure, so clicking (from excessive seeking) is a good indicator to 1) leave the drive spinning to prevent a catastrophic failure and 2) backup the drive immediately (even if simply copying it).

Thanks, everyone, I didn't realize this thread had more responses!
 
The drive is (or was) a 1TB 7200RPM Seagate SATA III drive used in an external enclosure.   It began with a consistent clicking sound that I happened to notice when walking into the studio one morning.   After unsuccessfully getting it up and running I turned it off.   I later tried again in a different enclosure but after a few seconds of clicking it went silent...   That's about where I stopped.
 
I fortunately had a second matching drive (also bought in 2011) that I never wound up using so I've since collected all my sample data back on that one.  I've also backed up everything copied over as I've went along, to a second internal drive and an external 1TB WD drive.   I plan to get a 2-3TB drive to act strictly as a backup, otherwise turned off and disconnected to preserve its lifespan.
 
FWIW, the cheapest clean-room service I found was $500, and there was no guarantee.  Everything else was in the $800 and up range.   Needless to say, I couldn't justify the cost, and based on some of the comments above regarding the lack of a TOC, sample libraries could be way more of a mess than not.  
 
Anyhow, thanks again for all the responses, I most definitely appreciate it.    Good discussion!