My Passport Model WDBACX0010BBK Data Recovery Options - DFW area

I have performed all of the troubleshooting recommended in this forum and have still not had any success in being able to see the hard drive on my computer, either in My Computer or disk management.  WD sent me another cable so I have ruled out a faulty cable and have tried connecting to another computer.  When I plug the hard drive in the light comes on and I can hear it, no clicking noises or anything that sounds abnormal.  Over the last week of troubleshooting there was one brief moment where I saw the hard drive on my computer and had enough time to open a few folders to see if the data was there but just as quickly as it appeared it disappeared so I feel pretty good about the data being intact.  This is all on a new Dell computer running Windows 8 with no prior problems.   

With this model of Passport is removing the hard drive from the case and connecting directly to the hard drive an option?  There are plenty of videos on Youtube that show various types of hard drives and docks and universal drive adapters being available but for the My Passport most videos only go as far as showing how to extract it from the case so it was never clear to us whether we could purchase some type of equipment and recover the data ourselves? 

Is data recovery software an option in my situation?  It seems unlikely since my computer doesn’t recognize the hard drive but I thought I would ask. 

Finally, I live in the DFW area and wondered what data recovery options I have available to me that others could recommend.  Are there reasonably priced services, from my limited research they seem very expensive. 

I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this! 

Tracey

Hello,

Please see the following link related to data recovery companies that have experience working with WD Drives.

http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?wdc_lang=en