New HD

So Dell is sending me a new HD. They told me a technician would install the drive and recover my files. Recover my files? OK, then send the technician.

The technician called this morning. He has my HD and will be there between 10:30 and 12:30 to install it.
"Well, I'd rather a different time" I say, "because my girlfriend is the one that'd be there now and I don't think she knows the location of all the files on the old HD that I want you to recover."
"Oh," he says, "I don't do file recovery. Dell lied to you."
"Well what do you do then?"
"I install the HD, put in the OS disk to see that it is installing and leave."
"Never mind then, just drop off the HD. Do you know of anyone that does file recovery?"
"Oh, I do recovery, just not as part of the warantee. I charge $75/HR"

A little more chatting occurs and we get to what he'd do to recover files

"I just put it in another machine as a second HD."
"I tried that, the disk isn't spinning up."
"Oh, well then I can't help you. The nearest place I know of that can is in PA and they charge 4 or 5 hundred dollars."

Great.

So he's going to drop off the drive this morning and I'll install it tonight.

Anyone have any ideas for recovering my data?