A father is appealing for the return of a hard drive full of sentimental pictures which was stolen in a burglary.

The gadget was taken from Bill Savidge’s home in Upper Belgrave Road, Seaford, along with £1,500 worth of cameras, cash and sat navs between midday on July 6 and 3pm on July 8.

The hard drive contained “priceless” pictures of family birthdays, graduations, weddings and other sentimental snaps spanning the last five years.

The 67-year-old art teacher also had treasured pictures of his artwork and paintings on the device, pieces which have been sold and which he has no other pictures of.

He is now calling on the thieves, or anyone who might have the hard drive, to return it.

Mr Savidge said: “The most difficult thing is they took the hard drive with all those priceless pictures on.

“I wiped my PC clean because we had a virus and put all the pictures and documents on the external hard drive. Now there’s no way I can recreate any of the stuff on there.

“They didn’t even take the connecting leads so whatever they got for it must have been minimal.

“I’d ask that if someone still has it, or knows who has it, to return it to us in whatever way you can.”

The hard drive is a black Western Digital Elements 500gb model. Other items taken were a Fuji Finepix FP-HS10 camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ10 camera and two sat navs – a Garmin Nuvi and a Navman S80D.

Mr Savidge added: “Someone maybe sitting on the thing who can’t sell it or doesn’t know what to do with it.

“But if they can somehow get it back to us, or if someone else finds it, it would be great.”

Email the police on 101@sussex.pnn.police.uk, call 101 quoting serial 1380 of 21/07 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.