As my friends have noticed, I have not been online for a few days as an unusually strong surge not only destroyed my previous computer's motherboard, it also overran the surge protectors before it did this. While I do hope to either collect insurance on the loss of an expensive computer, I have some data on the ahrd disk that I would like to retrieve. There are over 2500 pictures and illustrations of various fine guns, many sent to me confidentially by gunmakers in several countries and friends who have acquired unique pieces for their respective collections, links to over 400 gunmakers and gunsmiths websites, many of which are not normally acessible on a web search (again, many of these have been sent to me in confidence) and some personal files with article drafts for various ideas that I have been working on.

I have received quotes ranging from $ 250 at Staples to as high as $ 1200 from the manufacturer of the computer that got damaged for retrieving this data. Does anyone have any experience with any business that does this work? I would be very grateful for any advice that anyone could give me.