Computer theft was a six-figure steal

The thief struck at the National Hyperbaric Centre

The theft of a laptop computer has left its owner hundreds of thousands of pounds out of pocket.

That was the price tag that Chris Ward placed on trying to recover the "priceless" work and information stored on the computer.

He is now offering a £1,000 reward for the safe return of its valuable hard disk.

The sneak thief struck at the National Hyperbaric Centre in Aberdeen at around 1700 BST on Monday.

Mr Ward and colleagues were testing equipment in a tank when someone crept through a hole in a fence and raided the office, also taking mobile phones and a wallet.

Years of work was stored on the hard disk

His company ROV Networks Limited designs and builds electronic software control systems for mechanical equipment in the oil and other industries.

Mr Ward, 41, said: "The PC is essentially my portable office.

"It is where all the control systems are developed and is used for downloading and upgrading information to computers."

The computer had a 10 gigabyte hard disk which he estimated contained five years worth of information.

Years of knowledge

He said there were so many back-up disks they would fill a tea chest.

"There is years and years of time, effort, knowledge and information on there," he told BBC News Online Scotland.

"Although there are back-ups, you are talking about hundreds and hundreds of CDs that would have to be gone through to recreate that information.

"I am just annoyed."

Mr Ward said the computer also contained more than 8,000 e-mails, thousands of documents, databases and hundreds of web pages.

Huge store

"It is a huge store of information, and although it can be replaced it is going to take months of effort to do so."

He said the Ascentia computer itself was worth a few hundred pounds, while the software installed on it was valued at between £10,000 and £15,000.

But the information it held was "priceless" and the man hours it would take to build it up again would run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The National Hyperbaric Centre is a testing, training and research centre for remote intervention technology used in the sub-sea industry.