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.
Reputation Points: 229
Solved Threads: 149
Grandad
Offline 3,826 posts
since Mar 2004