Turning on the power results in the bright screen with the apple logo and the thing spinning around on the screen but it does not get to the login page.
1. Is it correct to assume that the hard drive is what got wrecked from the impact? I am guessing the hard drive because it seems like the most susceptible to damage due to moving parts, and because the machine seems to try to boot up but can’t ie. loading the first part of the operating system from ROM but can’t load the rest of the operating system from the hard drive.
Will any hard drive work or do I need to buy a Mac specific hard drive?
If I just give up and buy a new Macbook what are the odds I can recover un-backed up files (mostly photographs) from the Macbook that has been destroyed?
Have you tried booting from the Mac OS X DVD and running the disk utility?
Turn it off, then turn it back on and hold on to command-V while it’s booting. Does it say anything?
Yes, any hard drive will work. A standard 2.5" SATA drive will be fine. But your drive might not be hosed – the Macbook actually has an accelerometer that parks the hard drive in case you drop it. Might be something else going on.
If MiG’s advice doesn’t help you might try the following:
The read/write arm inside the drive might be jammed. If you’re feeling lucky, and brave, you can drop it fairly flat on a table (6-8" with computer closed and powered down) which might dislodge the arm. There will possibly be some damage to sectors of the disk even if you do get it to boot. If you don’t want to risk further damage to the computer you could remove the drive and do the same with it.
I’ve done this once with 100% success. I became a computer god that day, at least in one person’s eyes.
