My partner's laptop's motherboard went kaplooey the other day. Needless to say we hadn't backed up for a couple weeks and she has quite a few important folders on the laptop she desperately needs.

How hard is it to

A) buy a new motherboard and *myself* install it in the old laptop?

B) remove the old harddrive and somehow extract the contents?

Any help would be mucho appreciato.

Most laptop hard-drives are now a standardized mini-ATA interface. They can be plugged into almost any other laptop and even hooked up to a desktop PC with an adapter cable.

Example:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9857313-7.html

I would advise against trying to replace a laptop motherboard yourself. They are significantly harder to work on than desktops.

An enclosure sounds like an easy and quick solution.

Many thanks guys.

Thats what I was going to suggest, as putting it into another laptop would more than likely give you the BSOD unless it was the exact same hardware.

If you have an Apple MacBook Pro, replacing the logic board is quite easy. I always use http://www.ifixit.com/ when making modifications to my MacBook Pro.

All done - saved the harddrive. Cheers again guys =)