Broke External Hard Drive

[cis-150]

I have an older Western Digital external 500Gb hard drive that, as of a week ago, completely shut down. Every time I try and connect the drive it will sound like its about to start up but then clicks and shuts down. If anyone can help me either fix the problem or at least help get the information on it off on to another drive that would be greatly helpful.
Thank You

 

[FunnelWeb]

have you got a hard drive caddy which you can put the hard drive into, and copy your files from that to another disk. its a setup which i use most of the time, but if the hard drive is dead then obviously it will not do it for you, but you could try this way!! anyway hope it helps.

 

[PohTayToez]

This is what is commonly known as the "click of death". Your hard drive is done for, and unless you want to shell out a large chunk of money, so is the data on the drive.

 

[memory]

You could possibly still get thee data off the drive. I recently had a hard drive start clicking on me. I used a usb to sata/ide adapter cable to get all the data off of it. It worked like a charm. Here is an example of the cable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200155&cm_re=usb_to_sata%2fide_adapter-_-12-200-155-_-Product

 

[cis-150]

ill try all of the suggestions posted. Thank you all for the help and recommendations. Hopefully one of these will help me.