Ziay!

st. nate

It was in a G4 (silver model)

JimJamesDude

Freezing the drive for 30 minutes or so may revive the heads of the drive and give you 20 minutes to retrieve the data. You can buy programs like OnTrack's EasyRecovery (if the drive is still able to read data) and recover files from a bad file system. If you have super important files, you can pay companies (like OnTrack) to recover the data in a specialized lab, but the service costs in the thousands of dollars, depending on the necessary work.

*** NOTE *** If the drive is making anything but a faint whiring noise, power it off and leave it alone. Continued use may lead to permanent physical damage and make recovery impossible. It must be handled by a professional.