I feel you. Back in 2007, my barely one-year-old Acer laptop crashed. It was the night before a major project submission. Thankfully, my tech-genius friends managed to take the HD out, made it work like an external HD, and I didn't lose my work. It was a miracle.
This happened to me 2 weeks ago. After I finally restored all the folders/files form Carbonite backup, Windows update caused some windows files corruption. I have to reinstall the windows which will cause to all my files wiped out. I will need to restore from Carbonite again
This is so maddening! For what we pay for these things they should not have such a high fail rate! I know the feeling, makes you sick to your stomach - I'm so sorry!
Hopefully they can recover it all. I have some high recommendations for a techy guy....
I found DVD backups of files from 2012, and I think some of 13-14 might be backed up on an EHD.
Thankfully my scrappy stuff is on an EHD...hopefully it will all be fixed before the end of the month so I can get on the challenges and finish my card. And get back to work on my photo stuff.