hard drive issue?

[HDcrash427]

I apologize if I'm posting this in the wrong place. Please let me know where it should go if this is incorrect.

My macbook pro would not start today. When I try, I get the grey station screen with the Apple in the middle and the pinwheel blow it. Eventually the Apple is replaced with a circle with a line through it and nothing happens. Starting in safe mode does not work. when I try to start up in Target Disk Mode I get the fire wire image but when I plug in to another mac, it not recognize my computer. When I boot using the operating system installation disk and go to disk utilities and try to create a disk image on an external drive it does not allow me to do that either. I'm thinking there is something wrong with the hard drive. my priority now is to recover data from that drive. What I would like to know is if I physically remove to drive from the computer and try to access it as an external drive do you think it will work. Or are my symptoms indicating the drive is damaged to the point that that will not work.

Thanks

 

[chscag]

It does sound like your hard drive has failed. About the only thing you can try at this point is to remove it and place it in an external carrier or use an adapter (USB) to try and extract your data from it. However, if you were unable to access the drive at all it's unlikely you'll be able to do it when it's removed from the machine. The lesson learned here is to always make backups.