yes unfortunately all of a sudden, my HDD is dead or in the process of. I have backed up most of the stuff but takes me ages to set up the environment again on another HDD and need some stuff restored back from this drive.

I can recover data but this is a physical problem. Basically now when switching on it makes a load clunging sound...like its powering up, then down, then up and down...so of course immediately have switched it off. It's a SATA WD drive.

I want to know.....what can I do in this situation? Is there a way I can safely power it on and get what i need off from it? Im just worried obviously about that sound.....the rest I can do I believe

well you can connect it externaly, with usb to sata/ide cable, but i am not sure it will work any way, depend on you hd status. best of luck..