Hard drive won't show up on my computer. Is paying for data

[decrescendo]

I had a 5 year old Seagate harddrive make a few odd noises and then disappear from My Computer and Device Manager a week or two ago. It was 750 GB drive and I did not have several GB of personal pictures backed up.

Is it worth paying a local computer repair place $100 for an initial diagnostics test and then $100 per hour for recovery?

What exactly would they do? Is it something so cosmic that I would never be able to pull it off myself?

[DanR]

Get some quotes from a dedicated Data Recovery company before going ahead with anything.

A lot of 'computer repair' companies can only fix some logical problems.

[hddguy]

Is it worth paying a local computer repair place $100 for an initial diagnostics test and then $100 per hour for recovery?

No, it is not. You should seek a professional company who specialize in Data Recovery. Your local computer repair firm may be able to run software, or even change a PCB but very likely is the chance that they will have very minimal experience and even less success with serious HDD failures.

If you HDD does make 'a few odd noises' then this is concerning and you need to make sure your case is being dealt with by somebody who can give you the result you need.

Is it something so cosmic that I would never be able to pull it off myself?

Taking into consideration everything that goes into a thorough diagnostic and repair process, yes.

[hugov]

Friend, if the data are so important to you, seek a qualified professional. A computer technician, most will only ruin your hd, so that their service be priced more expensive, or even completely destroy your stuff.

I think the risk is not worth it.

[fzabkar]

Is it worth paying a local computer repair place $100 for an initial diagnostics test and then $100 per hour for recovery?

If the repairer only does logical recovery, then that should be something you could do yourself. However, it does sound like your drive may have a media or head fault. You may have some success with a tool such as ddrescue ...