How do I back up my hard drive?

[Notedog]

Yes I can. It has one 27 GB file in it.

 

[hikaricloud]

Oh and I take offense to the post about how retail techs are trained to drag money out of clients.

Well, they do. Most everyone I've ever seen does, and I'm sure a lot of people will agree with me. It's not normally the lackeys and such that do it, it's the managers...though I will say I have seen a few lower guys doing it. Yet of course, more people will trust people like them than dedicated computer shops...I smell some irony here.

Also.

I took it to best buy, and they said I would have to send it to a lab to get the files. And that it would cost me [b/300-5,000 dollars[/b].

The OP already went to Best Buy to see about backing his files up, and that's the price tag they through at him, even after the BSOD they were supposedly getting from plugging it into their machine. So somehow I doubt he'll take it back there.

Take offense to it all you want, but generalizations exist for a reason, and that reason being most of the time, it's true. So personally may not be like that, but I'm sure some of the managers at Geek Squad wouldn't because they know it's true.

Back to the matter at hand...

Hate to say it, but it does look like it's down for the count. There is one thing you can try though, but I can't stress this enough, make sure you read the guides on how to use it.

TestDisk - CGSecurity

I used this when the windows side on my laptop drive was borked and BSOD'd all the time. I would say this is probably your last option. The website has a bunch of scenarios, I think the right one for you would be "Recovery of a lost and damaged NTFS" on this page here:

Data Recovery Examples - CGSecurity

I would say that's pretty much your only option left at this point.

 

[Notedog]

But if the system restore files are still there, could I use them?

 

[hikaricloud]

System restore files wouldn't get back your data, that's strictly for the OS. Since you can access the system restore files, I'm tempted to think you don't actually have full on hardware failure, but a failed partition, like I had.

In which case, TestDisk is your best friend.