Data recovery on external hard drive

Hi all. A couple of days ago my WD Mybook hard drive decided to start clicking and "die". As it's never been of for 28 months it's done well! Anyway, I say die, but...
If I open disk utility I can still see the drive, it just won't mount to the desktop for me to be able to access it.
Does anybody have any ideas on how I can access the data on it, if only for a short period of time?
I have some stuff on it that's not backed up and would like to recover it if possible. I see many companies offering a recovery service, so it must be possible, but they charge more than the cost of a new drive (considerably so!)

Any ideas would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks.

PS: Do you think dismantling it and putting the drive in another enclosure would solve it?

If the drive can't be mounted, it may be very difficult to rescue data from it. Placing it in another external case is not going to help.

You might wish to try a software solution but there is no guaranty that will work after spending $$ on it. Data Rescue II.

Regards.

Thanks. I really don't think the data is worth it. It's about 2 gig of Photo's and 40 gig of unbacked up music. Nothing I can't get back music wise.
I just think it's odd that it shows up but won't mount. I will try something different tomorrow. At least I have an excuse to buy a 1TB drive now!

Update. I ran a demo recovery software pack, which was so slow I gave up. However, next time I plugged the drive in, it worked! No clicking or anything - bizarre to say the least. Everything is backed up now, just in case!
Word to the wise - never give up!

Disk Utility

Did you try repairing it or verifying it (in Disk Utility) ? and yes I do know hat this post is quite old