Hi,  Hard drive of my HP pavillon laptop has been broken, technician said 300$ to replace hard drive excluding service charge, just thinking, best to buy new one than paying soo much for 1.5 year old laptop. However I liked this laptop, and my all data just gone :(. Do anybobody has idea to extract data from damaged hard drive in resonable price? and also best wbsite to buy new one?

http://bit.ly/RakbYD

I usually buy at amazon or ebay, now-a-days stick to Western digital brand, they're sturdy ones to my knowledge
seagates and samsungs are not that good as used to be.
How did you know your harddrive is crashed? Do you see boot/harddrive device found message or just coz it's black/blank you assumed it's dead?
I would use BootCD to make sure my harddrive is still there intact , if this is the case, probably, your MBR is corrupted. If you can't detect anything using BootCD either, then sure enough your harddrive is dead.
If MBR is corrupted coz of some virus, or file deletion or bad sector or whatever misfortune, I would use BootCD to retrieve data to another backup drive, but if it's dead presumably, I would still take that kaput out and try some of these tricks,:

1. get the drive out, put it in freezer for about 2 hours, take it out, shake gently for a min and after 10 minutes insert it back to the laptop. Make sure it's not moist. Since some laptop drives(mine is SSD+HD) are still spindle/plate based, this trick might get your drive run for short time, back up everything as fast as you can if you are lucky enough to see the drive come back to life

2. get the laptop drive out, hook it to IDE/SATA to USB adapter and attach it to another working computer, and now you can try your luck using some data recovery software to retrieve the data off of it.

This is what I do most of the time, it's like hit-or-miss. You can try it.

Lesson no. 1: Always keep back up drive hooked up to your workstation, I've 3 external portable drives. I've not seen laptop with RAID system yet, so, that's the only option for now, keep multiple portable backup drives, and sync it, set it on automatic backup mode.

 Hi, Thanks for useful suggestions. My laptop fell  down to wooden floor, since then it displays a line of msg saying somthing is missing ( i havent remember the correct line thouogh). It also produces beeping sound like clock. I dont have sound knowledge in IT/hardwares so called a technician. He took out it, joined to his computer and daignosed as hard drive damaged and gave a quote of 300$ for replace. He said data recovery is expensive and he is not trained to that level. So I just hold on to browse alternatives before moving ahead for repair. 

Ya, I agree, backups are crucial and I was used to for it excet last several months when I could not prioritise it and this happened.

Thanks a lot, I may try some alternatives you share.

$300 just for hard drive replacement??
That's bit too much or may be I never had any necessity to take my comp repairs(since I repair myself) to any store, I may not have information on how they charge. But still, I would say that's too much. Add $50 on that $300 and sign up for frys newsletter, your email will be filled with great laptop offers at that price range. One time I saw Core 2 Duo laptop offer at that price range with some decent memory.
For instance, check this link below:
http://www.frys.com/product/7167982?site=sa:adpages%20page:P1_FRI%20date:101912
If I was first time customer with basic computing need, I would buy it. Approx. lil over $350 bucks, now you decide, would you pay $300 to that guy just for 1 hard disk or add $50 bucks and get the whole new laptop.

Or

this following link also has one laptop for $269. Guess what that laptop comes with 500GB/4GB RAM harddrive. lol, just saying.
http://www.frys.com/ads/computer-tablets-notebooks-accessories
These are limited offers, and if you wait till november Black Friday season, you would be in awe to get things half the price.

If you are sure hard drive is gone bad, buy one and replace it. I have done it for my laptop before by myself (I am not IT person). You have to figure out what type of hard drive you need. Just do some search. They are not that expensive as you have mentioned. You can get descent one in <$100. Replacing is not a big deal at all. Anyone can do. Look some youtube videos that tell you step by step procedure.

Because I am student, Univ has a IT dept they helped me to retrieve data from damaged harddrive. Even I went to staples and that guy was ready to help me to retrieve data. 

If you don't want to do it by yourself, take your laptop to one of the stores like staples, buy one from them and they will replace and retrieve your data from old one. They will probably charge just for the new hard drive.

 Thanx Guruji for suggestion,
 Ya I think I should try local IT stores to retrive data from this before give up. And if got hard drive in cheaper prices, definately wanna keep this laptop, even got chance buy a new one in black friday ( if got in best price)

If you are around Baltimore area, I can provide service for you at the lowest cost possible.