Hard Drive Data Recovery or repair Help

Hi everyone. My hard drive has gone terminal on me over the space of 24hrs. One minute it was working and the next it comes up with the following:

disk read error
press ctrl+alt+del to restart

and nothing happens if the above is tried

this error comes up after bios settings but before windows boot up etc

Now the drive is detected in the Bios and also if it is hooked up as a slave then windows can "see" the drive but NOT any of the data and a drive diagnostic software (done at the computer repair place) said error and couldn't read the drive

My assumption is that if both bios and Windows can "see" the drive then I am hoping that I may be able to recover the data

I am getting a new drive so repairing it is not a priority but I have lots of important work related data on it and if I could retrieve it it would save my ***!

any suggestions on what to do or any particular software i could try

Please help by repling to this thread or to my email. I know you've all heard it before but I'm absolutely desparate for a solution

incidentally
my system was a AMD 64bit laptop
IBM 80 gig hard Drive

Thanks Very Much

Try getting a working system with a new drive. Install a clean windows and then see if you can mount the old drive as a slave. Chances are good you'll be able to just copy your old files right on over.