it depends. I had this happen a few months ago. We had an external drive die on us, and well had some pics that were only on there.
Asked around at the stores, IT guy at work. We heard the $1700 charge as well, pretty much if they have to do some work and fix it , it will take some man hours. however if its something easy, you still get stuck with the big charge.
I went the do-it-your self route. Mine was different since it was an external drive and sometimes the drive is fine, and the controller /box is what broke.
I went to a computer store - microcenter, and bought something to power the drive exernally, and read the data thru a usb port.
Then powered the drive up, and lucky for me, got the data off.
You need to know if its a PATA or SATA drive. Lucky me had a mix, it was powered like a pata drive, and data like a sata drive. So, if depening on the age of the drive you may find that too if it was during a transition time. Also be careful, you probably want a volt meter. some of the converters i bought, the power wasn't really clean and wasn't at the proper voltage. So, I ended up mixing power from my other computer system, as the power from the converter (no worky), power from my computer system (got data off).
If you are going to go this route, you need another working computer, know a little but about taking your computer apart (safely), and if you goof up, be willing to take the consequences (all data could be gone cause you goofed something up). Plus, sometimes you end up with nothing in the end, or paying more for someone to fix the mistakes you made.