data recovery service, catastrophic failure

[Lynn Newton]

Fellow LInux lovers,

Has anyone ever had to use a hard drive data recovery service here in town?
Any recommendations on that?

I am looking at the very real possibility of catastrophic data loss. Over the
weekend I attempted to install a PCI USB card on my system because the
built-in bus apparently went belly up several months ago, meaning that
I've also been unable to do backups to my external drive all that time.

When I installed the card, it at first gave me a DISK BOOT FAILURE from
the BIOS.

I tightened down some connections in case I jiggled something while
installing the card. It came up briefly. I was able to see my card reader,
then when I tried to add my external drive to a port, it locked up, and
I have been utterly unable to do a thing with it since.

I don't want to get into a big sob story, but basically my whole life is
on that disk drive. (It's a 160GB SATA.) Yes, I have backups of much
that is critical, assuming that I can get up and also get to my external
drive, but I've done much important work over the last several months.

I've been working with computers professionally since about 1980
and this is the first time I've ever faced the possibility of a disaster
quite this big.\

Never mind *why* it happened for now. I want my files back.

-- 
Lynn David Newton
Phoenix, AZ