Will this kill my hard drive even further?

Hi,
My MacBook hung on me the other night and I heard clicking from inside it. I forced a shut down, but the machine would not reboot (other than to a blinking ? icon) which leads me to believe the hard drive is dud.
If I have to, I will pay a drive recovery specialist to have a look at it (and I know that costs $600 - $2000) but my question is this - is hard drive clicking a sign that it is very physically damaged and I won't be able to read anything off it in this state, in which case, there is no point me trying to run any utilities to try and get at my data, because this may only damage the drive further.
Or, is there a possibility that a utility like Data Rescue could see the drive - and get beyond the 'clicking' issue?
I don't want to use a utility if there is no chance it can help, when it might degrade the data. So the question again, is 'clicking' a sign that it is very physically damaged to the point that no software utility can help?
THANKS for your help!
Floop

Clicking means the drive is trying and failing to seek to place it needs to in order to boot.
You should first try booting from your install CD/DVD by holding down the C key during startup, with the disc already inserted. Then run DiskUtility from the Utility menu at the top of the install screen. See if you can Repair Disk.
If DiskUtility can "see", but not repair the drive, DiskWarrior might do better.
If both fail, then DataRescue II might at least let you recover. You can demo DRII for free and it will tell you what can be recovered. But you have to pay to do the actual recovery. You have to have an external disk to recover into. And if you download the demo, you have to have a working Mac to burn the demo's boot disc.

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This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
I believe I did reply this message elsewhere few days ago. Anyway. 750Gb or 1Tb is fine for your machine.
Regards.
BH
**Click the KUDOS thumb up on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

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