My WD Hard Drive isn't working

I’m on Vista, it was working fine yesterday, but when I plug it in it just makes whirring then beeping sound for a few seconds and it doesn’t show up anywhere on the computer. I checked device manager and the WD diagnostic program, plus updaters and  none of them pick the drive up. I don’t think it’s been dropped, but I can’t think of anything else. I have a lot of important stuff in there that is nowhere else. Is my drive dead? Can I recover the files?

ETA: It’s a MyPassport drive. USB 2.0, IIRC

Did you test your drive using a different computer, perhaps a different USB cable?