Hard Drive Won't Boot Up

[terri]

I have an external 120gb EZQuest Cobra+ hard drive that was picked up while connected and running. It made some 'clunking' noises and then the spinning sound changed. Not grinding exactly, but like it was having a hard time. The drive is about 3 years old. It has made that hard spinning sound several times before, but always rebooted.

I ran Disk Utility but got messages that "the underlying task reported failure on exit."

Then ran Disk Warrior, but it got hung up each time on step 5, scanning directory, so I force quit.

Tried the hard drive on other computers, but the same thing happened with Disk Utility. Sometimes it would see it and name it with the proper icon, sometimes it called it an 'unknown disk'. This happened on all the computers.

Tried unplugging, waiting, turning off the computer, etc., but that didn't work either.

Should I take it to a data recovery service? There is a local one, but I don't know how good they are. I do know they are PC oriented. Could they make it even worse?

Should I send it to DriveSavers?

Thank you.

Terri

 

[patrean]

Try Data Recovery X. I've recovered almost all the files from several failed drives over the past year with this app. If you can see the drive in the drop down list when you start Data Recovery X you are half way there. If you select Thorough Scan and it looks like it will take an hour or so you can be sure it'll find most of your stuff, on the other hand if it flies through the process in a minute or os I wouldnt hold out much hope. From experience I'd never use anything else.
Good luck