How to backup files if Macbook Pro wont startup? All I get is a Blank/white screen.

Hi there
On startup of my Macbook Pro I am just seeing a blank screen.
This issue has been discussed over and over alot of places, and I have tried alot of suggested solutions. So far none has worked.
The furthest I can get right now is holding down ALT after switching on and then I get to choose to boot into my external HD which has the Snow Leopard installation mounted.
From there booting into the Mac OS X installation I thought I could use Disk Utility's "Restore" funcion to backup my data, but I get an "input/output error" so thats not working.
I have tried to connect to another mac using target mode, but the damaged mac wont appear on the other. thats just a few of the obvious things Ive tried... No matter what I do, I cant seem to get access to my files.

Is there anybody who has a bright idea about how to get those files saved before I get a new harddrive for my mac????

I have just heard about a program called SuperDuper!... Could that maybe be of some assistance?

Or could some voodoo commands in Terminal maybe do magic??


Thanks in advance

SuperDuper! will be of no assistance in salvaging data from a dead drive. It is a backup application.

You can try several apps that claim to salvage data from failed drives - none of them will provide you with any guarantee and they're all in the $100 neighborhood. Bypass the apps that only work with functional drives that have been partitioned, formatted, had files deleted, etc. This is not the same as working with a failed drive.

Here are a couple:
Computer Data Recovery, Mac Data Recovery Software, Mac Data Rescue, Digital Data Recovery Disk for Mac - Data Rescue 3
Micromat - TechTool Pro 5

It really sounds to me like you may need to ship that drive off to the specialists if you want to salvage data from it.

Thanks - But I forgot to mention that getting the HD out of the Mac is not really an option as I cant open it because some of the screws are broken...