I have used one of those services based in San Fran, sent my drive in due to a mechanical failure, and they were able to recover 90%+ of the data, burned it all on DVD, and sent it to me on several DVD's. It was worth it in the end as the drive broke in my work laptop and I HAD to recover it. The company paid for it..it cost around $1400 a couple years back.. Question is, is what you are attempting to recover worth the price or not? If it is a bunch of pictures, that's a tougher call to make versus if the loss was a lot of business documents you need to retain. If it is just pictures I would be less likely to pay...