Desperately need professional data recovery recommendations! For recovering data on a portable hard drive, where is best? gaming computer builder

Hello r/computers,

I'm looking for a highly recommended professional data recovery service with a clean room which can help me recover the data from my WD external harddrive. I've done a lot of searching online and it seems like Drivesavers and Kroll Ontrack are two of the leading options but I really don't know if either are a good option, I've heard bad things about both, I'd really appreciate some recommendations.

A few weeks ago my house was struck by lightning twice, it took a toll on everything plugged in, all wires, and pipes. Everything was plugged into serge protectors and yet all of the TV's were totally dead, most of the entertainment center items. Of course it traveled through our AC and water pipes and both had to be replaced.

In my office my back up 2 terabyte WD portable hard drive and my wacom tablet were plugged in. The tablet survived without any issues. The Harddrive turns on like normal, no strange noises, I can feel it spinning, it blinks, and I can see the hard drive in disk utilities but I was only able to get to the data/folders once. All the folders were there but it took a very long time to load and disconnected before I could see the files. I went to the local tech shop and they tried a few simple things like taking the casing off and plugging it into the laptop directly with a cable. They also had me purchase an identical drive and tried replacing just the circuit board portion which did allow cause it to show up correctly (the proper name) but still we weren't able to access it. Anything beyond that they recommended a professional data recovery service with a clean room to get the data off. I have a budget of a couple of thousand to get the data back, I know that's not a huge amount in the data recovery world but I'm hoping it might be enough.

I'm aware of the stupidity of keeping important files in only one place, now I don't know what I was thinking! I guess I thought the hard drive WAS the back up which is just ridiculous and I'm very angry at myself. The photos on there are very very important to me so I'm just so afraid to send it off to anywhere that isn't top notch and have them blow my entire budget or worse have them ruin any possibility of getting the photos back.

Please any help or advice on where I should send my hard drive would be appreciated!

Quick side note as well, the insurance company sent electronic evaluators out to have a look at our items. Without my permission they took apart the hard drive and plugged it into their PC (it is formatted for my mac I believe.) I have no idea if this is a big deal and something that could have hurt my odds of getting my Hard drive data back, if it is I would like to mention it to the insurance company. Is this an issue?

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