Help! Unable to access data,clicking and squeaking sound.

[phreeqo]

It's a 300GB Seagate HDD, making 2 squeaking sounds every 2 seconds and loose ball bearing sound on a roullette every like 10 seconds. I can see all the thumbnails for every single file alright and how much HD space left but unable to open the files,let alone copying them. Tried using data recovery software but it kept on saying 'error 2 during ReadLogicalLBA'. Been suggested to physically freeze the HD inside a freezer which I think was ridiculous. Even so I would have like 20mins after its being frozen to copy the all the files and overall, the chances of success would be very slim.

[lcoughey]

My first piece of advice is to stop doing anything and disconnect the drive. Based on what you are saying, your drive is likely in the early stages of a head crash. Running data recovery programs against the original drive and putting it into the freezer is sucking any life the drive has away without ever copying one sector of data off of it.

Plan A - Take it to a data recovery pro. At the very least, they can quickly tell you whether or not your data is recoverable and how much it would cost to get it back. My guess is that you are looking at a price anywhere between $500 and $1500, depending on the company you use and the severity of the problem.

Plan B - If the data is not worth wasting a data recovery pro's time, you will need to start by doing a sector by sector clone of the drive. Any software that you will have access to will, at best, skip the bad sectors and hopefully copy the good ones. If the heads are failing, you likely won't get very far. If it is just a few pockets of bad sectors, you should be able to get a fairly clean copy of your drive, on which you then run the data recovery software.

The odds are, your drive will completely fail before you get a full copy. So, be 100% sure that you don't want to take it to a data recovery pro. If the drive completely crashes while you are trying to do it yourself, your price will go up significantly and the chances of getting your data back will go down proportionately.

One free clone program I recommend is gnu ddrescue that runs under linux.

Good luck.