I'm going to give this company a recommendation because I am very pleased with them (I am in no way affiliated with them).
A while back, I had a hard drive die and it turns out my back-ups were no good (always verify!). This disk contained some original business marketing material as well as 8 years worth of irreplaceable digital pictures.
I'd been delaying trying to have the drive recovered because it costs nearly $1500. Then I found the people at:
http://www.nationwidedatarecovery.com/They did a Level 2 recovery (clean room platter recovery) for $400. That included DVDs and 2 day air for the data. If you find yourself in the position I was in, give them a try.
My drive had a bad actuator.