Any computer tech can pull the drive and slave it to another computer that you have so you can pull the data off. Even if all you have is a desktop computer. It's probably a 2.5" drive, but the power and drive connectors are standard. Or will be with a cheap adapter cable. Then you can buy a mounting bracket for it and leave it in the other computer as another drive. Store all your images on it or whatever.
Or take it to CompUsa, they can crack it open, remove the drive, slave it to one of their repair pc's and burn your data onto CD's/DVD's. I wouldn't necessarily try to install it in another laptop, they usually only have room for one drive at a time.
Later, if it's a pretty big drive (40-60GB) or so, you can buy a little external drive housing for about $30-40 at CompUsa, install the drive and have a portable external hard drive you can take on trips etc. It's useful for moving lots of data between computers.