I have a 2.5" external hard drive that is failing. It's not making the expected 'clicking' noise that most hard drives and I am able to view the data, but I am unable to actually retrieve the data.

• I attempted to use SpinRite in order to access the data on the drive, but it didn't like the external drive.

• When I view the drive's property page, the drive shows that it's used space is at 100% and that it has 0 bytes available; however, the progress indicator under the drive icon in Windows Explorer shows that it's roughly 50% full (which is correct).

• When I attempt to run Windows' "Error Checking" tool and attempt to "scan for an attempt recovery of bad sectors," the tool begins to run then immediately closes with no error message.

• I am able to browse the contents of the drive using Windows Explorer. When I begin to try copying any given single file, the copy process begins, an indicator starts, and then the copy fails with no real error message.

• The Disk Management page in Computer Management under Control Panel also shows this drive has being 'Healthy.'

• I dropped the drive off at a data recovery store and they said that "The data seems to be intact, but an internal failure is preventing any information from being retrieved." They offered to provide me references to a data recovery specialist.

• I've also attempted to run CHKDSK on the drive (with and without arguments) but it returns the following error: The type of the filesystem is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

Before going the route of more expensive data recovery, I'm wondering if these symptoms sound familiar to anyone?

Other questions...

• I'm willing to continue trying tools such as TestDisk and/or PhotoRec (as the majority of the data that I'd like to salvage are photos) but how long I should expect either tool to run given approximately 400GB of data?

• I'm also comfortable using Linux so I welcome any suggestions for utilities or tools and strategies with which you've had success.