Fixing a broken HDD - can it be done

[saturdaygig]

I have a laptop drive that failed and I'd like to get the data off. It was going beep-beep-beep-beep and not booting. I didn't know hdds could do this because i've never heard one make a tone before, so I guess it must have some tiny speaker in there.
I took the top off and the head was half way accross the disk and stuck. However it quite easily moved into its home position. Now it spins up, the read head dances about a bit before going home. Then it stops spinning and nothing else happens. I'm hooking it up to usb and the pc is not reading it.

Anything I can try?

[SuperSparks]

I'm sorry to tell you that by removing the cover, you have pretty much blown any chance that you might have had to recover the data

Hard drives are assembled in clean room conditions that make an operating theatre look filthy, and a single smoke particle is enough to cause a head crash. By comparison to a smoke particle, a dust particle is like a boulder, and you have now got a large number of dust particles in there

[Midknyte]

Unless you have another identical drive to scavenge, I don't think there is much you can do. This is why are keep repeating how important it is to have backups. Laptops are especially vulnerable since they get moved around a lot, plus someone could just steal it.

Opening the drive is not a good idea, since you could have contaminated the platters. Supersparks said it all.

[SpywareDr]

Anything I can try?

http://www.Ontrack.com

[saturdaygig]

The data loss isn't a really big deal. Its my sons laptop and there was some coursework on it but its all been handed in.
I had another go with some success. Last time I was trying to run it with the cover still removed. By putting the cover back on it did run and I got a few files off before it went back to beep beep beep and off course the heads had stuck part way accross the disk again. No doubt some dirt in there as you guys suggest.