"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
Short of a catastrophic failure you should be able to pull the hard drive from your laptop andstick it in a desktop with a cheap adapter. My brother had a Dell laptop that they had designed with the battery door poorly supportedon the bottom and when flexed would contact an IC that would cut power to the machine. Just entering the model number into the googlemeister would cough up a slew of results(and oaths against Dell) for the same problem. Dell never acknowledged it.
Tom will get back with you when he gets the email. Tom is located in South America which may have something to do with the delay in his response. If he doesn't by chance, holler at me and I will get with him for ya.