Data recovery from hard disk - query from UK

[alstemp]

Hi

I have been told there's a chance of salvaging some data from a corrupt hard drive on my laptop but I just want to gauge general opinion before I pay out the £100 that PC World charge to do this in-store . . .

Last Friday my laptop (Acer running MS Vista home basic) crashed. I put the lid down and when I opened it again the screen had gone blank. I managed to get it restarted and quickly backed up all my documents (pictures, Word docs, other MS Office docs, etc) to an external hard drive.

However I use Windows Mail and I didn't chance to back up my email folders - I use my laptop for business and have dozens of files which I presume were also saved on my hard drive.

To cut a long story short I think my hard drive is corrupted - it's making a whirring sound and as prompted by my laptop I ran a "Windows Check Disk" programme which after 2 days was showing as only 32% complete so I think it is broken/hard drive busted.

The laptop is still under warranty (purchased in April from Currys). Howver when I spoke to the "Tech Guys" support service, they told me it sounded like a hard drive problem and the drive would have to be replaced. This service takes 14 days. However when I talked to them about the missing emails folders they said I could take it into a PC World store where they could do a data recovery to see what could be salvaged. THis service costs around £100.

Apparently the warranty is forfeited if I take my machine anywhere else (ie non PC World/Currys) to be "opened up".

I would just like a second opinion before sending off my laptop to get the hard drive replaced - do you think I can get any further data from it if I take it to PC World to be fixed?

I just want to make sure it's worth trying to get data salvaged or if it's a lost cause at this stage?

Many thanks for any advice