Recommend a data recovery company?

What about a program? If you have access to an external bootable drive then I recommend that you download the demo of [Data Rescue 2|http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php]. You can run the demo on your damaged hard disk to see what it can recover. If you can recover the files that you need, then you can buy it and save you a long trip to the apple store.
Steve

I know of one company that has a good reputation for data recovery: Drive Savers ( http://www.drivesavers.com/). They are good, but very expensive.

Do you currently have a backup plan? I'm guessing not. It might be a good idea to also invest in an external hard drive for periodic backups (especially if you have leopard since it comes with time machine). It's much cheaper (and less stressful for you) to have a backup plan in place before such a thing happens. Just a suggestion.

I hope everything works out for and wish you luck! I'm glad to hear that you have a backup (even incomplete). So many people don't have a backup strategy at all.

Hard drives are weird. It's hard to say when they'll go. They might be a few weeks old or 10 years (or more). It doesn't matter what kind of computer either. My cousin's 6 month old PC had a hard drive failure. So, it's not just an apple thing. They buy their drives from the same manufacturers (Seagate, Hitachi, etc) as other computer manufacturers. Granted, Apple doesn't allow you to keep the old drive and other computer manufacturers do (for a price) which would be a nice option to have.

The same maddening thing happened to me. I didn't do anything wrong, and the HD failed after 1 year and Apple Care won't cover recovery, and I'm livid.
Apple provided me with local providers of data recovery, though, and some were cheaper than others. I don't have that info onhand, but contact apple for a list. Good luck.

I'm in the same boat, HD just died, got a new one from Apple today under warranty but I don't have any of my old data backed up. Just bought an external HD to start doing that, too.

Have either of you had any success with recovering your data yet?

I have my hard drive ready to send to drivesavers (the one mac suggested) in the morning to get a (probably very expensive estimate). I found some cheaper options online but don't know anything about them.

AMarieB, I'm sorry but no computer company (none that I know of anyway) covers data recovery. It is unfortunately standard. Data Recovery is expensive (as you know now) and it doesn't always work. I highly recommend that you keep a current or fairly current backup of your data. I cannot stress this enough. If you have leopard, time machine is built-in and will automate your backup for you in conjunction with an external hard drive. If you don't, there are programs (some are free, some aren't) that will do the same thing as time machine and will take some of the hassle out of backups. If this should happen again in the future (to this machine or another), it will be a lot less stressful for you, not to mention cheaper.

JamieNY, I'm glad to hear that you now have a backup solution, just make sure that you keep it up to date, especially if you are working on a project. Most people tend to forget to make sure that they have backups of projects (unless you have your backup set to backup every day or so).

I only mention this kind of thing because I see it all the time and I know what a pain it is. It's a lot easier to have a backup strategy beforehand than it is to try to recover data, especially if it's something really important like a dissertation or project that's due the next day (Murphy's law, right?). I wish all of you the best of luck.

*"Apple Care won't cover recovery, and I'm livid. "*

No computer maker will pay for recovery costs. It's up to you to keep regular backups of your files.

i just used Sassinksky Data Services in Medford, NJ, they were great and got my stuff off my hardrive. They offer a guarantee too. Call 800-975-6193, you can ask for Norm or talk to anyone else there. Vicky