Data recovered! Thank you Lenny & Alex!
Lenny and Alex over at DataTech Labs were great. They followed through on phone calls, were very kind and helpful, answered all my questions, and were very clear on expectations on data recovery. They thankfully were able to recover 99.9% of my files on my failing 2018 Western Digital 3TB external hard drive (which had stopped mounting, but still had a normal mechanical whirring sound. It was on the verge of dying). It understandably took them a few weeks to a month to evaluate, recover, and have a new SSD drive shipped back to me with the recovered files, but it was worth the wait. They thoroughly went through the recovered items over shared screen on a zoom call and reviewed the scant few unrecoverable items. As I said, they were helpful at every step of the way. The price for the recovery was even a little less than what I expected, and for that I am thankful. Thank you Lenny and Alex! You saved the day!