portable external hard drive!!!!

Anyone any good with hard drives? I have a samsung portable external hard drive that has decided to stop working:mad: It has loads of old pix etc... that i want off it couldnt care less about the hard drive working again.
I turned it on one day and it just clicked and made a space invaders type noise:laugh: only way i can describe it and hasnt worked since.
I have sent it off to a couple of companys who either cant get the data off it or want to charge near £1000 and still not possibly get all the data off of it:sad2: They say the heads have come into contact with the discs and damaged something.
Is there anyone in the data recovery game or someone who knows a decent company they have had experience with? as all i seem to find is rip off merchants:mad:

sounds like how much it roughly would be. some places are much more... and they never will be able to garuntee how much they can recover,,, sometimes hardly anything,, yet u still pay $$$

Have had experience of a company called Vogon in the past, now called Kroll Ontrack but don't believe its going to be cheap.

On track in Epsom will be the next place il try as I hear some good things, still pricey tho, I'm not expecting to get it done for nothing, but can't warrant spending that sort of money if I'm not gettiing more boost:D

When I worked in IT support I used to retrieve data using the following http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-SATA-I...ht_2528wt_1141

It would let you get most stuff back as long as harddrive could spin.

There does come a point where it is unreadable though.

Cheers matey il have a look into that. Not sure if it spins tho and the report states that the heads have gone but they couldn't get the parts:sad2:

Had a similar issue today with someones laptop. We plugged the drive into a SATA to USB converter and then plugged it into a PC. We then had the dreaded clicking noise from the drive so normally it's game over. I picked the drive up off the desk and for some reason had it held at about a 45degree angle. Low and behold the ticking stopped and we could read some data off the drive, enough to get the users documents off although there was some corruption. Now I strongly believe it was a fluke but possibly worth a try with tilting the drive.

I have tried all the little tricks freezing it in a sandwitch bag, tilt, tap, think its just fubared:sad2:

Is the disc still spinning or is it clicking?