External Hard Drive Crash

Hi, I have a firewire/USB2 external combo drive, which is my main backup
drive for my laptop. Tonight it was working fine as normal and then it just
went dead. I have tried both the USB and firewire connections on two
different computers. The computer recognises the device after plugging it in
and swtiching it on and then My Computer window freezes and the disk drive
makes a rythmical clicking sound that I haven't heard before. Please don't
tell me there's no way to recover the files. Half of them are backed up on
another external drive but I hadn't quite finished this secondary bacup
process. Any suggestions as to what may be causing this and any solutions??
Thanks.

"pbl" <> wrote in message
news:-NudnbgNEoX9Y4fVnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@internode...
> Hi, I have a firewire/USB2 external combo drive, which is my main backup
> drive for my laptop. Tonight it was working fine as normal and then it
> just went dead. I have tried both the USB and firewire connections on two
> different computers. The computer recognises the device after plugging it
> in and swtiching it on and then My Computer window freezes and the disk
> drive makes a rythmical clicking sound that I haven't heard before. Please
> don't tell me there's no way to recover the files. Half of them are backed
> up on another external drive but I hadn't quite finished this secondary
> bacup process. Any suggestions as to what may be causing this and any
> solutions?? Thanks.

If you have any thoughts of saving something from this drive do not plug it
back in. The clicking is the sound of death and each click you hear further
damages your drive and the recoverability of the data. You're only hope
would be a data recovery service that can take the drive apart and try to
recover some of the data. This is a VERY EXPENSIVE process and most people
will decide to suffer the loss of data rather then spend that kind of money
on the hopes they can get something back.