The department IT staff can try to help recover data from disk drives if the disk is still functional to the point where it can be accessed from another computer. However in the case of a totally dead drive that is not responding at all, the only recourse is to take it to a company that specializes in data recovery.
At this time the only data recovery company that we have had any experience with is DriveSavers Data Recovery. We are not providing this information as an endorsement of DriveSavers, only passing on the information that people in EE have used them in the past, and in most cases they were able to recover all or most of the data from the drive.