Dropped the TB from about 2 feet onto the carpet...it lights up, does not open but requires me to remove hardware, it has everything I have ever done in the Army on it, plus pics....I have a 500GB drive as well and it works fine. I do not hear the click of death, but i do get the "installing drivers" then driver never installs, it times out basically. What is it going to cost if i have to take it to someone to recover data? can i do anything to recover it myself?

Let's try to recover the data because the cost for disaster recovery is unreasonably high, approaching a thousand dollars.
Do not take the drive to any national computer supply stores/chains. The geeks will format the drive, if they get a chance to do so (and tell you to restore from backup).

These steps will not further risk losing your data.

You may also need to request "FixYa Premium Support".

Please keep in touch via comments or a new post and refer to "Gort007" if you need to contact me.

Read Options A and B completely before deciding which to do.

A. This requires opening up the unit.
1. Unplug all cables from the drive.
2. Open the WD World book
3. Re-seat the data and power connectors.
4. Check the connections again. Re-seat the data and power conenctions, again.
5. Carefully re-assemble.
6. It should work, if not do the steps in "B."

B. This does not require opening up the unit:
1. Purchase Avanquest Partition Commander ($50). Other experts may suggest a different or free utility. I trust Partition Commander.
2. Purchase a 500GB (or enough to copy your data) hard drive or another WD My Book, or any other external USB (or eSATA if your computer supports it).
3. Connect the NEW disk and delete all of the partitions. This is the NEW disk or external drive.
Do not create any partitions on it. The "Partition Commander" will do it.
4. Connect the damaged WD Mybook to the computer and boot the computer with the Commander CD.
5. A list of the disks will appear after selecting the default menu selections.
6. If the Mybook does not appear, then this option will not work until the steps in the "A." section above.
7. Copy the Mybook partition to the new hard drive.
8. If unable to do so, then try to browse the Mybook and copy folders to the new hard drive.
9. At this point yu may have to create a new partition on the NEW drive in order to copy your data to it.
10. If this does not work for you, please either do the seteps in "A." above, or explore Partition Commander more.
11. Partition Commander will triple check with you to be sure you do not do any steps that you didn't mean to.
12. Do not format your damaged drive, even after you recover the data. It is your ultimate backup.
-Gort007.