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>1. Does it seem like the drive might be readable maybe using another device? or it seems that it's gone? (especially with the clicking sounds! seems mechanical failure). Maybe a trick to make the drive last a little bit longer? I heard about putting the drive in the freezer lol.

the clicking sound might mean that a certain part of the disk is not reachable: either bonged up sectors/partition table or mechanical failure. I had one nearly new drive at a professional data rescue service: they got all the data back from a drive not accessible under windows under USB and some linux variants. But probably too expensive for only 40H of work lost.

>2. The most important files is a project that I probably have lost 40 hours worth of work, the online backup I have is 1 year old but I've changed the application only a few times since then. Maybe I could extract the code from the executable, what experience using a tool to recreate the code from the exe?

about 10-15% of work duration as long as refox works on the exe and provided that it is only a medium sized app with a project structure not too convoluted. There is a one time setup cost involved as well as a compare at the end, so the more work needed to be recreated the better/lower the percentage gets as this setup time remains nearly constant. Reapplying such changes into a previous version is helpful as comments of the old version are kept - has to be recommented for the new changes. Depends on your commenting practice. Also few large new subroutines added are easier than hundreds of minimal cahnges, esp. those done via GUI editor: slight moves of groups of controls are expensive to recreate, real code changes are easy.

>3. Recommendations on a reasonable priced company for data retrieval as a last resort?

was too long ago in my case - and not reasonable, only necessary ;-)

>What other options do you guys see?

try to access via linux and have a prepared batch file ready to copy over the necessary files so no time is lost when the drive can be accessed. Your freezer idea might have merit, might also be harmful as it puts the drive beyond normal operating range. The drive might become inaccessible when heated to usual working temps. So accesing it early and in moderate temperature outside might give you a longer window of opportunity.

HTH

thomas