I have had a Dell Inspiron Laptop for over 3 years. Two months ago it fell on the floor and completely stopped working. It does not turn on period.

Being an idiot, I did not save a lot of my important information on cds. Fixing the laptop will cost me the same amount of money it would cost to buy a new one, so I am not going to repair it, but I would like to know if there is any way I can retrieve the information that is on its hard drive?

If the hard drive itself has not been damaged you can remove it, fit it to an 'External hard drive caddy' (Google that term for examples) and retrieve the data off it.

Ensure that you get an external drive caddy which accepts 2.5" Notebook drives as well as ordinary 3.5" hard drives. The caddies plug in to your USB or Firewire ports, depending on the model you get, and operate the drives as external ones.

If the hard drive itself is damaged retrieving the data may be possible for a professional Data recovery service, but that could possibly be even more expensive than buying a new laptop.

Ok, I will look into the information you provided. I do not really know if my hard drive was damaged because the laptop does not turn on. But, I will try what you suggested. If this does not work then I will have to collect all the info I had all over again. :rolleyes:

Thank you!