Today my Lacie Rugged firewire external HD overheated. Electrical burning smell evident. iMac running OS 10.5.8 will not recognize drive at all. About 250 G of data, mostly RAW, TIF and JPG images.
Questions:
What is the likelihood of being able to retrieve data? I need consoling.
I have a quote of $700 - $2500 for retrieval. No pay if data not recovered. This sound reasonable?
I do not know enough about recovery. What should I be wary of?
Thanks very much for any guidance.

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