Hard drive status

I got my replacement hard drive from Dell. I slipped it in, loaded Windows XP and MS Office, etc... Everything works. It took me a while to get the Internet going and I had to turn my back on it for a couple of days, but its up and running now. There's a few irritating kinks but its up and ready to go.

Now on to the old hard drive woes. I have a couple of options. The first would be to try to access my files by setting up my old drive as an external drive via USB2.0 cable. That would only cost $30.

The next, and last resort, would be to get a data recovery company to recover the data for me. And I do need it recovered.

And here is the quote:

The estimate to recover data from the 30GB hard drive you described is:

• Standard 1-2 Business Day Service: $900-3900.


• Economy 5-7 Business Day Service: $500-2700.


• There is a $200.00 attempt fee if the data is not recoverable.


• Priority Round-the-Clock/Weekend Service: $1800-8900, with a $800.00 attempt fee.

A special 10% discount will be applied to your final recovery cost. This discount does not apply to the attempt fee or to any backup media you may purchase.

Recovered data can be put on the media of your choice such as a replacement drive, CD, DVD, DAT tape, magneto-optical or removable media cartridges and floppies.

So I'm taking donations right now! Paypal is best. ;)