This morning my hard disk died. No warning: when I turned on my PC the BIOS didn't recognize it.

It is a 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAJS-00B4A0 (Caviar Blue, I think). The date on it say 21 Nov 2008 (2 years ago, almost to the day).

Here's what I can tell you:
- I have had no problems with the drive up till now. No errors at all.
- The PC housing it is connected to a surge-protected UPS.
- I have tried it several more times over the course of the day; it has stayed broken.
- I have tried it in an external HDD caddy. No joy. The light goes on, the power LED lights up. I can hear it spinning (rather quietly).
- More precisely:
1. I hit the power on, using the external caddy
2. It makes a slight "Fut" sound (like a very short buzz), then it seems to spin up, then about five or so staccato fut sounds (all very quiet, like it's accessing data) then...
3. And then nothing. It doesn't spin down. Doesn't make any other sounds.

I can't "see" the drive in Windows at all.

Can anyone please be of any help?
Specifically: what is the probable cause?
More importantly: can I fix it?
And if not: can anyone recommend anyone who can? (although I am ridiculously poor )

The most important data I need is only a few MB at most. It was backed up in a couple of the partitions. I was stupid enough not to realize that those two partitions were on the same physical HDD.

Probably a firmware issue, usually is on that model.

No, it's nothing you can do yourself I'm afraid.

We can almost certainly sort it out for you.

PM if interested.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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Just an FYI - I took up pcimage's offer and they fixed my drive in double-quick time. Super service. Many, many thanks to Sean and co! You guys are real lifesavers.

Way to go Sean Good work.

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Iorana Haraharaini