Berkshire Laptop hard drive recovery?

[MrChips]

I've well and truly fubared my laptop, been attempting a data recovery disk but having it running for 1 week and it's only at 10% done!

Anyone got any recommendations for computer wizards near Reading who may be able to recover the data and supply a new hard disk?
It's a Sony Viao if that makes any difference.

Cheers
Dave

[MrChips]

Cheers team!
Basically it's been running slow for a couple of weeks, then whilst backing up pics onto an external hard drive, it froze.
Restarting could only get to a blue windows background, looking like it's trying to run the startup repair process, but won't go any further.
F2 seems to open, but v.slow although running a hard disc test shows it as ok, but it took ages to run.
Borrowed a windows disc and it won't even boot from the cd drive, it runs the disc but then freezes.
I'm thinking it's something physical rather than software based but really need someone with a bit more expert knowledge.

[MrChips]

Cheers. It's been at a friends house running a Linux based data recovery disc but in his terminology it's "being French" so I think I'm going to put it down to experience and just get a new hard disk fitted.

Any recommendations for online places?

[MrChips]

I've ordered a new drive from dabs, gone for a 120gb SSD so i might as well try the freezer trick tonight on the old drive!

Oldskool, what software is it? From my Microsoft pal he's sure it's just that the drive has physically failed somewhere.
There's nothing on there that I'd cry over if I can't recover it, but a few pics from the last year or so which would be great to get back. The fact it failed in the middle of backing up everything to my external drive is just funny!