Restore hard drive using disk utility

One potential option, that would not be as expensive as a recovery service, would be to try an app, like DiskDrill, to see if it can restore any of your files on this drive. Of course, there is no guarantee that it will, but they do offer a free trial version to see what you are up against.

Can you still copy files from it? If so, simply drag them off on to another drive.

If you can't, there are data recovery services for HDDs, but they often cost quite a bit and offer no guarantee of success.

Agree with previous posters' assessment and External Drives do fail often times without notice.

As for Data Recovery, also as pervious poster mentioned, it will cost $$ with only partial success at best.