I have a Western Digital USB external hard drive. I had it for about a year and all of a sudden the thing starts making a ticking noise when you turn it on, but when you plug it into the usb port, vista makes the sound that it detects the drive, but it does not show up and I cannot access it. I have tried all different types of data recovery software, but they also do not detect my drive. So i’m thinking about sending it to one of the data recovery labs. How exactly does this process work? and about how much would it cost me (it is a 500 gb hard drive with about 200 gb used up)? and about how long would it take for me to get my drive/files back from them?
thanks for all the answers everybody. i know that taking it to a data specialist will be pretty expensive, but around what range are we talking? and where are some of the places that I could take it to?

I want to purchase external portable hard disk for backup data purposes mostly. Reliability and quality is very important.

What can you recommend?
Western Digital Passport External Hard Drives Often Fail, Because One USB’s Power Is Not Enough To Spin Up The Drive.