If it looks like a hardware failure you need to be very careful not to use the drive aside from extracting the files.
If I were in this situation I would remove the drive from the computer and use an external enclosure or a device like [http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=941&sku=30504|this USB <-> IDE/SATA converter] to plug it into another computer and either copy off important files or image/backup the complete drive.
If that's not an option, you can try to plug an external drive into the laptop if it'll boot and copy files off that way, but that's more risky.