This really seems like a scam to me. It's possible that the amount of guilt that this person feels is sufficient to motivate them to buy the a 160 gig disk (an

This really seems like a scam to me. It's possible that the amount of guilt that this person feels is sufficient to motivate them to buy the a 160 gig disk (and spend time selectively copying the most important data) but not to motivate them to buy a 250 gig disk and copy everything. It's also possible, though, that this person is trying to draw you into a conversation focusing on how important the data is to you, in order to convince you to send money to buy a disk or buy the laptop back. Actually, how sure are you that they even have your laptop? Did you mention the theft someplace public, like on a blog or twitter? The only information they've demonstrated that they have is your email address, the fact that you've used Time Machine at least once (probably a pretty safe bet if they know your laptop was a Mac), and the approximate amount of data that you had stored (assuming you know that's correct and aren't just taking their word for it).