Help Please! Drive makes strange noise (not clicking, etc) .. Audio mp3 file inside

[isam]

My drive seems to have started making this noise. In addition, the OS won't recognize/mount it at all, and all the usual methods for data recovery don't seem to recognize the drive either. The drive is normally in an external firewire enclosure, and I assumed that it was this enclosure making the noise, but after moving it into the computer itself on the internal bus, it makes the SAME noise. Has anyone heard this before? If so, do you know what it means, and how to fix it?

I'm sure this can't be good, but it has left me stumped.

here's an audio clip of the noise, if it helps

http://www.lifeofexile.com/noise.mp3

[ktkendall]

Wow, never heard that noise before, but I would have to say your harddrive has went to harddrive heaven. You may be able to send it back to the manufacturer to be repaired, they are the only ones really qualified to crack open a harddrive and even have a hope of being able to fix it. The CIA and FBI can take the platters and retreive the data cause they have some very sophisticated equipment that can do that, but I doubt you'll be able to persuade them to do it for U..

[glc]

Manufacturers don't repair drives and return them - they exchange them for new or refurbished drives. Data recovery companies such as Ontrack are the only ones that disassemble drives to recover data, and that costs BIG bucks, think $2000 or more depending on the drive size and how much data is on it.