I contacted Daniel Evans from Rapid Data Recovery (http://www.rapid-data.net/) and was quoted between £97 and £150 to recover approx 120Gb of data from a hard drive with a mechanical fault. Thinking this was a good price I sent the HD off and phoned four days later for an update.
I was told that the engineers were unable to find any data on the HD and that they suspected the PCB on the back. To try another recovery they would have to replace the PCB at a cost of £195, due to the part being ordered from America.
I called Daniel four times over the following week and eventually was told that they had received the new PCB, installed it and tried to recover the information. I was told they were only able to get 2% of the data back before the second PCB broke down, and that the data recovered was all corrupt.

At this point I told Daniel that I was not prepared to pay any more money for further repair attempts, and asked him to return my hard drive. He told me it would be returned in that evening's post, but four days later I had to call again. The UPS tracking number he gave me was incorrect, and I had to call him 3 times to remind him to contact UPS and find my HD.

Eventually I told Daniel that I was considering legal action as I felt he had lost my hard drive. he called me that evening to say he had found it and re-sent it. It arrived the following day, and there is no evidence of any work having been done to the hard drive.

I have since scanned the internet (which I wish I had done first) and found that many people have had the same problem.

Below is a copy of the standard technical report they sent me:-

job number ###### (number removed)

Re: 3.5" Sata - Data Recovery

The diagnosis has been completed on your damaged HDD and the technician involved on the recovery has advised the following:

Diagnosis results have shown that the head assembly unit has failed. The technician has advised the next stage of the recovery process is to replace the complete head assembly unit, rebuild the HDD and then attempt to extract your data. This is a highly skilled process but unfortunately isn't infallible. The chance of a successful recovery once the process has been completed is approximately 85%.

The costs to continue are as follows:

Parts/labour required to attempt HDA transplant - £195 + VAT.

If unsuccessful this initial payment is non-refundable. If successful the following cost to retrieve your data will be applicable:

Data Recovery - £195 + VAT.

At present you have incurred no costs and if you decide against the recovery attempt I can return your disk FOC.

If you decide to continue with the recovery attempt I can accept the initial payment via credit/debit card and the process will be completed in 2-4 working days.