Toshiba Laptop HD having issues... can i recover the data still?

I have hit a stumbling block... Am helping a friend recover her data from her laptop hard drive that's gone belly up...

It's a Toshiba Laptop HD 320gb...

It isn't being seen by windows and makes a click click click noise. Yea, I know not good... It DOES spin and the arm does slide across, but seems to get stuck in the center and then tries a few times before it finally slides back to its resting position...

I've tried everything I can think of -- I really appreciate any suggestions or discussion you may have...

I've tried whacking it, tapping it, putting it in the freezer, putting it on a hard surface with something on top of it, putting it on it's side, back, and front, singing to it, cuddling it, and threatening it with complete disassembly to be put in my hard drive box of horrors that will never be again collection lol... I would have thought that last technique would have worked -- but it didn't... Both inside an external usb case and internally in my pc -- it's a sata drive. Tried it both on my desktop running xp and laptop running windows 7. no dice. Again it does run, I can hear/feel it spin -- I feel the spindle sliding across hitting the center then tap tap tap several tries before it slides back home again...

I didn't bother spinning the drive at it starts up as it spins fine... Unless that helps this issue too?

So what's the problem with it? I know it's not the card on the hd... it's not a power issue... is it a spindle / assembly issue? Suggestions? Ideas?

I really appreciate it... Thanks.