Technology Failed Me

Need a place to vent,

In august I started the process of replacing my wife's computer.  She had a Pentium III 800Mhz PC with 256MB RAM.  It started out running Windows 98SE and I upgraded it to Windows XP about 2 years ago.  The thing as slow as hell.  I upgraded the memory to 256 to help with the sluggishness, added a second HD because her primary one was getting low memory warnings.

So I buy all the components to make her a nice PC.  New HD, new duo core processor, new mobo, 1GB memory, new case etc.  Long story short, first PSU/Mobo combo I was getting minimal power to the board but nothing else, no fans spinning nothing, so I get a new board and new psu.  Same symptoms. I change out the board for another board, and same power supply, still nothing.  Turn it on, it comes on, but what's this? Smoke and burning coming from the computer? Turn it off!  unplug everything then try it again with nothing attached but the board and psu, and I get nothing. Get a PSU tester, find out this PSU is shot too.  Call the manufacturer and they send me out a new PSU.  So I think I'm ready to go. 

I bought another board after taking it to a computer repair guy to get a diagnostic, he says the board is faulty.  So I have my new healthy PSU, healthy board, plug in my wife's too old HDD's and a brand new SATA drive.  Get to the BIOS, hmmm, thats odd no HDD's are showing up, try it a few more times.  Still nothing.  Take the HD out that had the OS on it, and flip it over, a huge scorch mark on the logic board.  My heart sinks.  I keep desperately trying to get it too boot.  Back to the computer repair guy.  He runs a program on it, trying to recover the data.  Nada, the Drive is dead.  I tell my wife, and she is rightfully upset.  Kicking herself for not backing up her data when her gut told her too.  I had upgraded computers before and never had an issue, so never even considered backing stuff up.  Now, wokr on her thesis, music, pictures of her shopping for her wedding dress, other pictures of us, all gone.

I mailed out the two hard drives to a company in California that did HDD recovery.  I just called them today because they had not gotten back to me.  They told me the hard drives suffered internal damage and would need to be disassembled in a clean room.  $500 just to look at them.  Any where from $750 to $2900 EACH to recover the data if they can.  The guy told me this procedure is what they do for forensic work for the police or for major account recovery for businesses. 

So, I have to tell my wife a second time some of her most important data is lost because of my inability to think ahead and take the safe road.  I feel horrible right now, trying to justify spending this money on the chance they might be able to save some of the data. 

Sorry for being a downer but all I want to do is crawl up in a ball and die, I know its just data and pictures, and the like and we still have the memories, but it is something that could have been avoided that bothers me the most, and I hate letting my wife down. 

If anyone knows anyone or anything I could do, I would greatly appreciate any assistance/information that you all have.