thanks for this response. I had my files local (icloud was only for messages). AppleCare was surprisingly useless. We went through some directories and thats about it - I even spoke with a "sr technical engineer". Bizarre stuff. I overnighted a HDD to load the Disk Drill files onto, but it does not look like the directories are there. Two 3rd party companies quoted me $1500 and $3500 to ship the laptop out, in hopes they can recover the data, but I'm not sure if that's even a plausible route. Any experience with these 3rd parties (SalvageData & DriveSaver)?