Fatality of hard drive click?

[El Moose Monstero]

My other PC, the main one, has just started a regular clicking noise in the harddrive on boot up, basically it won't start up any more, it just sits there clicking.

I know this means that there's a dead hard drive to be replaced, but am I likely to be able to recover anything from it or have I basically lost everything on that drive?

[Stormin]

If it's worth the money to do so, you should probably take it to a recovery specialist. Trying to fix something like that yourself with instructions from the internet might just do a lot more harm than good.

[Netko]

You could attempt to salvage data with GetDataBack or a similar program - its probably a lot cheaper then a recovery specialists services and (excepting the absurdly expensive ones that go the extra mile) they likely use the same type of programs to attempt recovery.

I've had good experiences with GDB, managed to recover all the disks that died on me (including two external ones which got dropped on concrete from a height), however, as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

[Baka^Ni]

Seal the hard disk up inside a plastic food bag and freeze it. If you're lucky, you might be able to recover enough life out of it, to start the drive spinning again.

[White Haven]

As counterintuitive as that sounds, it CAN work.

[El Moose Monstero]

It does so far appear to be working, so thanks everyone - freezing it does seem to be allowing me to recover some data, although whether it holds out long enough for me to get everything off it seems unlikely. Fingers crossed though, for my very cold hard drive.

EDIT: Got everything - it seems to be working all right, it might even last long enough for me to be able to clone the drive on to its replacement, which would be awesome.