thank you Ouderkirk - will keep that bookmarked for the future. No, she lost them when her computer was lost - there was a fire....
Funny, she always says if she didn’t have bad luck she wouldn’t have any, but things are actually going pretty okay for her now :-)
Merry Christmas everyone and thanks again!
If the disk will spin, you can attatch it to another computer and inspector will recover the images. If the electronics are fried there are way to get new electronics attached to the drive, and be good enough to recover valuable files. These sorts of things are best done by a professional, but the cost is not as bad as one might think.
Good luck to her and Merry Christmas to you and yours.