If you ever find yourself in my situation, then the following guide will save you a lot of money and time.

I was working like normal on 1.4 year old HP Laptop when all of a sudden my screen flickers streaks of colored lines. I turn off the computer and then turn it back on only to find that the screen is totally black.

The lights powered on but I was not able to get a picture on the screen no matter how many times I restarted. I just couldn’t figure out what happened. I’ve owned 4 different laptops in my lifetime and none of them had any problems like this. I never spilled anything on my PC nor did I drop it. I treated it like a Queen.

I decided to bring the laptop into a local repair shop for them to have a look. They charged me $65 to take a look at it and find out what was wrong. A couple of days later they called me and told me some bad news. They said that my motherboard was fried. What?!!! How can that be?

It wouldn’t be worth the price to fix the PC since I could get a brand new one for the same price or even less. After regaining my composure from this shocking event, I decided that I must move on. Before thinking, I told the PC technician to recover my data as it was essential for my business.

They quoted me a price of $75 which seemed like a fair amount to trade for retrieving my data. Only later after doing some research online did I find out how much money I had wasted.

The next day, I went into the shop to pick up my PC. Can you believe they wanted another $75 to transfer the data they backed up onto my external hard drive? That what they charged, I figured I would get the whole thing. Luckily I had done my research and knew with a little confidence that I could simply recover the data myself.

I picked up my laptop, took out the hard drive, went to Fry’s Electronics and purchased an external hard drive enclosure for $10 measely bucks! All I had to do was stick the hard drive into the enclosure and connect the unit to desktop computer via a USB connection.

I then went into My Computer and there was a new drive that I could access and find all my data sitting right there! If I hadn’t done my research I would have been out $150.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that when I picked up the laptop from the repair shop, the technician asked me why I didn’t want to transfer the data to my external hard drive for $75. After I told him why, he wanted me to give him my non working laptop and he would drop the transfer fee.

To hell with YOU! was on my mind. I paid good money for this piece of equipment and I will not just give it to you so you can profit even more. I’m going to take my dead laptop and sell the parts myself on Craigslist.

OMG, these PC repair guys are just as bad as car mechanics and lawyers. It just irritates me to no end when I get overcharged for something that doesn’t require much work or time.

At least I have my data now safely stored away.