Hard Drive Crashed - Help Recovering Files!

My 500GB external hard drive (Hitachi DeskStar) crashed! The blue light comes on, and I can hear the hard drive spinning, then sounds like it's stuck, or clicking ...

Same thing happens to the internal HD on my iBook G4. Sometimes the internal HD works, sometimes not.

I desparately need to find someway to attempt to either fix the external 500GB HD, or recover the files. The 500GB was my main HD, and I have so much very important data that I need to recover (no backups!).

I have years of research (lots of family history), thousands of pictures (many very old), my personal journals that I've been keeping for years, personal information, letters, documents, family videos, and all of my e-mail.

Somebody was telling me that there is special software that will recognize the HD, and allow you to recover the files.

What would you recommend? At the present I have no money to do anything, but will save up for the recovery software. My uncle is getting me a new hard drive, so I'll have that to back up the files when I have the recovery software ...

vja4Him have you tried Disk Utility's / First aid in your Utility folder thats in the apps folder to see if it can repair it or directly from you start up disk, put your disk in drive hold down the C key then start up your computer you'll find the utility's in the menu bar ?, if that fails try DiscWarrior or Drive Genius or TechTools Pro, they maybe able repair or rescue your data. best of luck.