This question is about local places that can do data recovery work, so it would probably apply to any OS, but my friend with a problem today happened to be running Windows XP on a Dell laptop. What local computer pros might be able to get some data off of this HDD? Here's what happened: The Dell laptop's HDD had failed during the summer and the drive was repartitioned. Just the other day my friend left the laptop running and went for a cup of coffee. When she got back it had powered down, or was on standby, or was hibernating, or something. She went to press the power button but accidentally pressed the "Media Direct" button which is right next to the power button and looks just like it. Unfortunately, that small mistake marked the end of her working laptop. After that it wouldn't boot, Ubuntu Live CD couldn't mount the drive, and Windows XP install CD said that the drive needed to be reformatted. I got out BartPE and ran "chkdsk c: /r". It ran and when it was done I could look at the drive using Ubuntu Live CD, but I could not find any of her data. It still will not boot to Windows and says "NTLDR is missing". So who in the Twin Cities might be able to find some of her files? Mike