I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 Laptop that came with Vista on it. I used the hard drive while it was running Vista. Recently I reformatted to Windows XP Pro and the hard drive still worked with it for a few days and then randomly stopped working.

It still lights up when I plug it in, but after a few seconds it starts clicking and doesn't stop. Plus, the computer doesn't recognize it at all.

I can't open it up without voiding the warranty and I'd definitely like to save that money, but I really want to try to salvage the data I had on it (tons).

Is there anything I can try besides going to a data recovery service? It's so expensive and I'm broke.

Thanks!
wiztek, can you expand on what you were saying? I'm not sure I understood.