water + laptop = not good. Help
 

I accidentally spilt water into my laptop while it was on... it is a really stupid story, so let us not delve into how it happened. Anyways, it shut off, and refuses to turn on anymore. I immediately took it to where I bought it from (Best Buy) and they told me they can't do anything about it. They told me if I had a warranty (which I don't) the best they could do is replace it, but not even that would've been possible since the damage is my fault. So I call up Toshiba support (it is a Toshiba Satellite A10/A15 series laptop) and I get to their laptop tech support. They're going to send me a box, then I put my laptop in there, and ship it back to them.

A few things first though...
I spent several hours figuring out how to take the laptop apart and was finally able to do so. I'm fairly sure the motherboard is what got damaged, though. Would it be possible to actually just order a replacement motherboard myself instead of sending it all the way to them? Also, there's no way in hell that I'm going to let go of the data I have on that HD, I have way too much sensitive, rare, extremely important data, and no I don't mean porn. A friend of mine said a laptop's HD won't connect to a normal IDE, so is there any way for me to back up that data onto my desktop?

Many, many thanks in advance.

A new laptop is your solution.

I brought the laptop in my bag, with a bottle of water, and the bottle wasnt open a little. The bag turned into a pool, entire laptop dead.

Sent it to dell, they replaced it under warranty (which was a week from expiring) and Im working on it now.

Yes, they knew it was negligence, and yes, they shouldnt have, but they did.

So give it a shot, but I think a new laptop is in your future...

On the note of data - remove your drive before you send it in, Fry's can do data recovery for you and burn it to CD. In the end your friend is right, laptops drives arent compatible with IDE, most arent even compatible with each other.

Perhaps this is what you need to use the hard drive on a PC to try and save the information?
or maybe this (labeled toshiba)

Hmm... thanks for the info guys. I'm not going to give up on my motherboard replacement though. I can't seem to find anyone who has my same motherboard. I'm not even sure which of the many numbers printed on the motherboard is the part number/serial numbers/whatever-other-identifiable-number. Want me to provide high-resolution pics of my motherboard?

yes. Link to it though if it's excessivly large please.
I'll have a look if you post it.

They aren't coming out at all. Please give me time to figure out how to adjust the camera properly. In the mean time... has this happened to anyone else?

normal laptops wont connect to IDE, but there is a converter that you cna get to make it hook to IDe.

Well the motherboard is fried for sure--I saw the burnt marks. Looked endlessly for the motherboard but no one seems to carry spare motherboards for the more recent laptop models. Makes sense. I talked it over with some people and we agreed that I'm just going to ship it to Toshiba for them to look at. I know the problem isn't anything but the motherboard, so I am equipped with enough knowledge to not get screwed over. I'm still going to look into getting that IDE converter, though.

That IDE converter is relatively cheap and easy to use. Buddah used one to help me save all the files in my lappy once...

Stilt, there is only one source for your mobo.. Toshiba.

Dell has an amazing extended warranty. One of my sales guys spilled beer all over his lappy and they replaced it, no questions asked.