re that, "few files I could save.."

That could mean several things -

It was a small % of what you'd like to have saved (?) - is what I read.

Just to elaborate a tad, on options you may still have:

Assuming that you have an idea of what % of files you had (and don't see now) ie, which are no longer visible, where you expect, options vary from: merely clever ---> heroic.

Most anyone here knows more about that progression than I - but I know that the most subtle techniques are now a $Big industry (and can routinely extract stuff most of us wouldn't have believed possible, 5-10 years ago.) It's at least posssible - if only some partition or lo-level-format marks are missing, say - that SpinRite\ufffd could even replace the missing marks, via its statistical data recovery routine == nondestructively. Many bets are off for certain ongoing mechanical failures, of course.

So if you find you are really missing some stuff - post a bit more info. (Did the guy mention any Whys? re things he couldn't easily find.) Maybe on the desktop trip, he can elaborate a bit on what he saw - for further pondering here. Things like: whether a normal directory/file listing is even possible, in HD's present state. And maybe - what the sucker sounds like; is it self-destructing every second it's spinning? (He may have some experience along these lines.)

Sometimes it's worth the $$ (well, Some $$) for recovery - certainly to most businesses it often is. Only you can decide how much you 'miss' the missing stuff, etc. Possibly someone here could/would do some intermediate-grade recovery (?) HDs mail cheap. You don't sound geekish enough to learn a lot of jargon; do a lot of fancy repetitive stuff - which is lengthy to write out, in any case. :-)


Break a leg,

Ashton