That's what I would do as well before just taking their word for it.  There is some really good retrieval software out there.  It has helped me retrieve things off a harddrive that was in RAWdata

If it's making a noise that's something different.  There are different things you can do to try to get the data off of one that is even clicking, but with those scenarios, you usually have just one or two shots to get what you can off of them.