I’ve lost all of my DJ, production and senior year files and need urgent help to try and recover these.

I am a full-time college student pursuing a B.F.A. in graphic design. In addition to my studies, I am also a DJ, Twitch streamer, bedroom producer and content creator for YouTube. Five days ago, I was backing up important files needed for my education to start building a portfolio since I'm approaching my senior year. That evening, my laptop froze for about 20 minutes forcing me to give it a hard reboot. To my dismay, neither Windows, Windows Recovery, nor the BIOS would boot. I took my laptop to a repair shop last Friday, and I received the unfortunate news that my main SSD, which I purchased last year to accompany my new laptop has died and was the reason why neither Windows or BIOS would boot. This drive contained everything important to me, including my in-progress portfolio, project files, music exports and much more. Additionally, it housed data that I had transferred from older drives since 2018 from older laptops, such as demo recording sessions and footage from my very first DJ set back in 2021. About 1.71 TB worth of current projects, files and memories are stored on that drive, and it now seems like they are gone forever.

This is the first time I have encountered a drive failure, and my only two choices are to return the SSD for an RMA, but this would mean I would lose everything for a brand new drive, which poses a significant problem since all my work is stored there. Or I could take it to a data recovery center to see if there's a small chance of retrieving some, if not most of my files back. Given the circumstances, I've decided to go with the second option and see if they can help me recover my files. I've been responsible for my own bills while also paying off my college tuition and purchasing supplies totaling over $1000, the most I have ever spent on a semester and that amount is still increasing due to the materials needed for the six classes I'm taking. The most expensive items were an analogue film camera, 100 light-sensitive sheets of paper, rolls of film and traditional supplies for my illustration, life drawing and graphic design classes. The money I've been using to cover these expenses came from my last part-time job before this semester began. My days are extremely long as I practically live on campus from 8 AM to 10 PM Monday through Friday, some of these classes lasting six hours consecutively. To put it simply, the money I had left is completely drained, and it's impossible for me to find a stable job to support myself.

Everything I do in my life is fueled by passion, and it all begins with the work I carry out on my laptop and the files I keep on it to help me achieve my goals. Every poster, project I've created in FL Studio, my live DJ sets for the community I call home, the videos I produce for content creation and my entire education depend on my laptop and the files stored on my currently dead drive. At the moment, I'm facing a hefty cost that I honestly don't want to pay, but the thought of losing all my work in an instant is daunting, and I find myself out of options. Truthfully, I hate asking for money in any scenario and it's rare that I ever ask, but I'm getting desparate and I really do need your help right now. There's a possibility that even if I send this drive in for recovery, I may not get them back. But if I can recover even some of the most important ones through this process, that's good enough for me. If you're able to donate anything to help, it would mean more than you can imagine. Everything will go towards the drive recovery and the portable drive I'll have to pay for to store my recovered files.