Corrupt Hard-drive?

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I have a western digital 160Gb hard-drive that I pulled from my old gateway and enclosed to use as an external to swap the data to my new systems. It has been working fine. I last used it Thursday, was not in the office on friday and attempted to use it today (monday) and I received a "cannot access because of I/O device error" mesage. I ran the chkdsk and it did a bunch of whirring and clicking and now I can see it in my computer and get the properties up (by right clicking) but now if I try to access it I get an "incorrect parameter" error message and in the properties it says there is no data and no space available. Also, when I hooked it back up to the gateway, it wont boot, just gives me a blinking cursor and a red smiley face in the lower left corner. Any ideas? I have a lot of files on there I need. Any chance to recover or am I just screwed?
 
External enclosures are well known for frying hard drives. I suspect a data recovery specialist is the only way you will get your data back and that will be expensive.
 
how expensive are we talking? hundreds? thousands? I have pics on there of army buddies, some of which arent here anymore so it is VERY important to me. Thanks for the quick reply, by the way.
 
If it's clicking, most likely the Read Heads are shot.

For a reputable company to attempt recovery, you're looking at 100's - minimum...

They'll probably have to remove the Platters, install them in an identical drive and see what can be read.

If you have irreplaceable data, you HAVE to have backups, nothing is infallible.

I've had customers in tears when told their hard drive has failed, when 10 minutes and a blank CD or 2 would've saved all that heartache.:(
 
You could try freezing it (google for more info) and quickly putting it in the system to try and recover data, but you can damage the hard drive in the process, so it is a last resort only.
 
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