I don't have the time for a drink from the cup

I have been trying to figure out what to call this post, and I finally settled on some variation of being hosed.

Mostly because, well, I am.

You see I came downstairs to my puter this morning (my relatively brand spanking new MacBook which I got last August) to find the Mac versio of the Blue Screen of Death.

Yes I called Apple Support - they could not help and made me an appt at the Genius bar at my local Apple Store.
Yes I went to the Apple store - they could not help. My laptop is still under warranty and they had to order me a new HD cause ya know they JUST sold out of any they had in stock. AND the guy thinks it's a problem with the drive head - cause he said he could hear it trying to read the disk.

Damn

This means that quite a lot of information is gone. Just gone. It is possible, but not likely, that data can be recovered. But I don't have the multiple thousands (or more) of dollars it could easily cost.

BayCon Data, Magical Acts Data, PantheaCon Data, tons of personal data. All gone.

Spare me the lecture about backing up data. I know it, I have heard it, and no it wasn't done. That is the one thing that I had not been able to get set up since I got the damn thing 8 months ago. In fact, backing up data was one of the things I was going to spend today doing, ironically enough. Along with working on a small ton of the con data that is now gone.

So - if you needed something from me in relation to BayCon, PantheaCon, WesterCon or Magical Acts your patience is not only requested, it is required.

A lot of the data can be recreated, but it will take time.

A lot of it cannot be cause in some cases I have no idea what was lost.

I have the paperweight, I mean the computer, sitting in it's travel case waiting for it's new soul.

I have the old HD in a static bag, useless for anything up to and including being a paperweight cause it's mass is less than that of a deck of cards.

Once we get the new HD and all my renstallable stuff reinstalled I have pocket geeks who are going to make certain that shit gets backed up. But that doesn't help me with what is gone.

What frosts me is that the data is likely there and fine, mostly due to the apparent problem being that the drive head not connecting to the disk. Which means if we can get the damn thing to READ I may be able to calm down some and get the data back.

But that requires someone with a clean room, and a spare HD drive head, and time.

I know this is WAY out there. But if any of you people know anyone who may be able to frankenstein the old drive long enough to get it read and the old data extracted, please let me know. Yes I know it will be spendy. But even knowing about good experiences with data recovery places would be helpful.