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.
 

Yes, Gillware is who we use. They are quite good and only charge if they can recover data. However, a recovery is generally going to be $800. It is expensive because with a problem like that they actually open your drive up and replace components in a cleanroom to read the data off.

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, Jesse.  I appreciate the info.
 
Unfortunately the time required to rebuild the drive from scratch isn't quite worth $800, so if that's where rates typically fall I know what I'll be doing...   
 

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. 
 
 

My cat's vet had a drive crash with no backup, and they lost all kinds of billing data and customer data, so they went through a data recovery service.
 
They did run somewhere around $900, and did recover data, but it was a big mess, and they ended up entering it all back in manually because they found it too much of a problem to work with whatever the data recovery service gave them back.
 
They are now running backups per some suggestions I gave them from my days as a DBA.
 
That is the only set of folks I am aware of that have gone through that exercise, so I cannot tell you it would be representative of the services in general, one way or the other.
 
Bob Bone
 

What brand/model is the drive you have?

There is a freeze method.  I don't know if it really works, never tried it, but if the electronics are OK  supposedly putting the drive in the freezer for a couple of hours has worked to get data off of a crashed drive. 
 
This is a good example for backups.  Backups are not for "if" they are needed but for "when" they are needed.
 
 

 
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.
 

fireberd
There is a freeze method.  I don't know if it really works, never tried it, but if the electronics are OK  supposedly putting the drive in the freezer for a couple of hours has worked to get data off of a crashed drive. 
 
This is a good example for backups.  Backups are not for "if" they are needed but for "when" they are needed.
 
 

 
I don't know if that method works or not, but I have heard about it second-hand.
 
The 'click-of-doom' is a fairly common failure mode.