Does anyone here know much about laptop hard drives? My laptop (a Compaq Armada V300) took a fall today, and has stopped working. I was planning to use it to print out some time-sensitive applications I'd like to send before I leave for Vermont tomorrow (I'll be gone a week and a half).

I have know way to know for certain, but I figure there's a good chance the hard drive is still good, and that the files can be recovered. I don't know whether it can be plugged in to just any computer, or whether it has a special interface. If I want to plug this drive into a desktop machine, what sort of drive controller and cable would I need?

Also, does anyone know someone who has this exact model of computer? (It has a WPI AV Department tag on it, but I got it from a reputable source so I'm guessing that a bunch of them were sold to WPI students and staff at some point.) Perhaps the least painful way to salvage this situation would be to boot another V300 off this drive, then use Windows XP's native tools to make a backup of all my files and settings that I could then transfer to whatever computer I end up replacing this one with (though how I'll replace it with no money I don't know).