Drive stop working

I have an external hard-drive 3TB Western Digital (WD) My Book Essential device. Recently, something happenned to the device and it stopped working, It made some noises on and off for a few minutes and at this point I am not able to recognize it by my computer. Please advice. Is there a way to recuperate the files in it in some way? Thanks

Recovering the files depends on what was it that happened exactly, can you describe the sounds it made? And is the drive on disk management? (Right-click computer> manage> disk management) or is it seen after a firmware update?