There will come some point in your life when a hard drive craps out sans warning. It could be due to a number of reasons–physical damage, file corruption, etc. There are computer service centers that would be happy to extract the data for a (hefty) fee; a true geek would be the one working at center, not taking his or her drive there.

To find out how to retrieve data off a damaged hard drive, read here: http://laptoplogic.com/resources/5-ways-to-retrieve-data-off-a-crashed-hard-drive