[Skunkworks] External Hard Disk Recovery

Hi Techies, My external hard disk malfunctioned i.e. once connected to laptop via USB the flash disk icon cannot be viewed hence data is inaccessible. It uses the IDE. I have a lot of important data on the disk and would really like to extract it. Is there anyone or company out there who could get a connection interface to the hard disk aside from the USB connection and retrieve the data ? Kind Regards, -- "There's no better gift than to do something that you love to do, and being good at it "