Hard drive data recovery?

[R.Youden]

My external HD has had a bit of an accident. It fell about 30cm onto the floor, bloody cat, and now it isn't working. I makes a really weird noise and won't mount.

How successful is data recovery in these cases?

Anyone in the UK know a good place to take the drive?

 

[pjarvi]

I just sent a drive out last month for recovery (in the US) and the cost was just shy of $1,800. I went through OnTrack, and was overall satisfied with the experience. The drive I sent out for repair was making a grinding noise that sounded like a bad bearing. They were able to recover all but 3 files on the drive, and the 3 files they couldn't recover were just system files.