So what's your guys's experience with data recovery?

[WillOfTheLand]

Having a drive with what are assumed bad sectors preventing it from booting windows and limited resources (money) what's your guys's experience with data recovery, whether it be professionally done or attempt via DIY, and most importantly for those who have had it done professionally, who would you recommend and/or is the cheapest? Being unemployed I don't really have the money to go spending on data recovery but I also need the data on the drive if I want to find a job again, as well as family memories on it and everything else, but I'd rather go professional than trying something like setting dd to very slowly clone the drive in linux and hope to god it doesn't kill itself in the process. It's only a 320 gig drive but what's in that 320 gigs, I need.