Writer-Musician Data Recover

Hi!  I'm published author Ruadhán J McElroy , author of The Mod Stories' New Dance: A Modernist Romance, and Simple Man: The Autobiography of Peter West.  I also perform music as Ruadhán and record experimental music as This Is Where the Fish Lives , and have notably recorded an industrial/noise soundtrack for Un Chien Andalou with Jason Crowe (best known for recording as Pandable and Pandanandi).

There was recently damage to the external harddrive where I kept all of my writing and recordings dating back to 1999, and due to a glitch in the app, I had failed to save my own works to my OneDrive (and after fixing this problem, forgot to go back and do it).  The external drive is barely two months old, and like most reasonable people, I didn't forsee any potential issues with this drive this soon.

I'm pretty good with computers, myself, and have several friends who are better with them.  We've exhausted all the troubleshooting that we can do on our own, and have called in professionals who've given me a high-end estimate for data recovery.

I'm in the middle of my third and fourth novels (books two and three in The Mod Stories), and also in the middle of recording my first vocal album, ever, and I need these files.  Unfortunately, I have barely over $100 in savings, and data recovery averages at a couple thousand dollars. (I've also figured in money to replace my drive after data is recovered).  This drive also contains over fifteen years worth of unfinished stories and music PLUS my music library that I DJ with. 

I have three jobs on the line without this data, and am in desperate need to recover it all.