Buffalo External HD-CE1.0TU2-EU problems... help!

[GravityShmavity]

I bought my external 1TB hard drive last year in February and have been using it happily ever since - it's had a comfortable use and hasn't even been filled to 50% capacity yet and I've made sure to keep it in a well ventilated spot etc etc. 

 

Things I store on my hard drive include the back up files for my computer (Sony Vaio Laptop running Vista), my entire iTunes library (over 8000 songs and over 100 tv show episodes) and many other files that are very important to me such as videos I made for family occasions and work related videos.

 

I was using it to play music and watch videos last night and about 30 minutes later when I resumed using my computer my hard drive wasn't working.

Whether this is unacceptable or not is irrelevant to me currently - I need solutions to getting my data back, I'm aware that the warranty is still valid and I have the receipt etc. but I ideally I want a new HD AND my data back - not one or the other. 

I've come to the realisation that this is probably not possible, so I'll settle for my data.

 

Symptoms include nothing particularly unusual aside from the fact the computer no longer makes the "duh duh" noise that it usually makes when inserting a USB device, it now calls it "Local Disk," says it is "unreadable" if I try to perform disk checks and actually slows down my computer when inserted - even preventing windows explorer from working correctly... right click wont work when the HD is in!

 

I just want my data - but I don't necessarily want to go straight to a data recovery firm - any suggestions?

[AngelsAbys]

There are other options available for data recovery pending on drive status, there are programs available online to a small fee to recover data.  Before committing to an option like this you will need to verify some information, like does the drive still show a partition? is there still a format on the drive (i.e. fat32/ntfs) this information is present in the disk mgmt utility of Windows.