Any experience with hard drive recovery services?

[tuftears]

My computer fried its power supply, and the disk went with it! Argh!

I've bought a new computer (not my first choice but when I gotta get back online in a reasonable frame of time, waiting a few days for a system to be custom built won't work) and have been reinstalling applications, but I really want my programming projects off of the old drive. I've heard estimates ranging from $129 to $500 or 1000.

Has anyone used these services? Recommendations? Suggestions for keeping the price down? The disks should be just fine, it's just the circuitboard that's fried on the drive.

Edit: I should add, the disk circuit board is most likely fried, so software solutions are unlikely to work. I've just heard back from one place that says 'Send the drive in and we'll give you a quote' - yeah right, you get to hold my hardware hostage before telling me how much it will cost?

Comments

[wordslinger.livejournal.com]

I *have* recovered (a lifetime ago) software from a pretty badly damaged hard drive, but it took hours and hours and hours (nearly a week) and I did have Norton Commander or something like that. I've done it by slaving it to a second drive as well but it's not always successful.

(sigh) It's been too long, I think, since I did this kind of work. Given the hours and the software cost, I'd say it would be cheaper in some sense to have someone do the recovery for you. Hopefully Tug or Shaterri will have some better suggestions.