Computer Help Please!

[Jarlaxle]

This past weekend a friend of mine dumped a bunch of booze all over my laptop, destroying it. It won't turn on at all. It was a relatively cheap laptop, $400, and I only used it for writing on a program called scrivener, I'm sure all you writers here are familiar with it. I am certain I had all my files automatically sync to dropbox, but a check there reveals nothing. Just before the fateful spill I had saved my work and closed the program which automatically creates a backup, I assume on my hard drive (if you cannot tell I'm technologically useless).

My question is: with estimated fixing costs more expensive than what my laptop is worth, if I buy a new laptop and do a data transfer  from my old hard drive will I be able to recover these files to use on my new laptop? It is literally all I had on the laptop, and I estimate it to be about 120,000 words, thankfully, about 80-90,000 of which is on my iPad from when I purchased scrivener and transfered the files. Still a tough pill to swallow.

[TioJorge]

It depends exactly how much liquid was spilled on the laptop and where it seeped in as well as where the hard drive is located in the laptop. If the laptop is more than a few years old and cost that much back then...hell yes, get a new one and pay a friend or (as a last resort due to fucktardedness) pay Geek Squad to fuck your shit up transfer the data. If it won't turn on at all and it was a whole lot of liquid, prepare yourself for the fact that it may well all be fucked already. Either way you cut it, your best bet is on a new laptop. The transferring is probably more trouble than its worth.

Very important note: It's not a simple matter of taking out the HDD and voila, you can transfer your data. Laptops are a bitch to work with and mark these words: Geek Squad will ream your wallet until it's a gaping void and chances are they'll make your pay premium for having to open the new laptop up. Internal HDD's can't simply be hooked up to a new board without opening up the laptop, so your new laptop, right off the bat and out of the gate, is going to have to be opened up and screwed around with, more than likely by some dimwitted fool who gives less than half a shit about your property if you go the Geek Squad route. (Can you tell I don't like Geek Squad?)

Swallow the pill. Take the time to rewrite it and move on with a nice new laptop. That's my advice. If it were a desktop it'd be different but laptops are just a royal pain in the ass to work with even if you know what you're doing (I mean, if you really know, then they're just annoying). Unless it was life or death vital information, it is absolutely not worth either the hassle or money (or risk, in regards to Geek Squad) to transfer the data.

[BlobVanDam]

A laptop hard drive isn't much more trouble than a regular desktop drive. It's usually just a matter of unscrewing the bottom plate to get to it (this is what Youtube tutorials are for), and then either stick it in an external enclosure or free slot in a desktop (a lot will manage 2.5" drives these days, but not all). No need to mess with the new laptop, just copy the files across.
This is assuming the old drive works. As Tio said, it depends on how bad the liquid damage was. Can't say I have any experience with spilling stuff over my equipment, alcoholic or otherwise.

[TioJorge]

Oh right...holy hell. I'm tired.

Ditto on the experience part. Even when I was getting piss drunk I was still too anal to let anything near my preciouuussss(es).