Fiel Wrote:+snip+.
Exactly what I was going to say. If your hard drive is screwed, he most likely just got you a new hard drive. When hard drives die, it's hard to get data off them. By the tim ehe got his hands on it, it was probably too late to recover anything at all from it. Doesn't sound like you got ripped off at all.
Did your dad's friend say anything when he gave you the computer back? Usually they'd give you a breakdown on what they had to do for your computer. Or did you give your laptop to your dad to take care of everything?