Macbook dropped, weird Bootcamp/HD situation

[celine1018]

Yesterday: unibody Macbook is open as it drops from counter. After that, mouse still moves at normal speed but processing gets slower and slower, then stops (spinning beach ball). When it stops I decide to try restarting it.

When I restart it, the white screen with the Apple logo pops up, underneath it the loading wheel, underneath it an empty loading bar. I wait a long long time, and it just keeps at that screen. Each time I try restarting to Mac it does this.

A friend who works for the Apple store suggests I reset the PRAM and try again. Again, white screen.

I try turning it on while holding T, thankfully the Firewire symbol pops up, meaning things are still kind of working...

I decide to try using Windows in Bootcamp. It works completely normally, making me the one person in the world who has Windows come to the rescue when Mac fails. I am currently writing this on Windows as we speak.

Today: my Apple friend uses Firewire to connect our laptops, he uses disk utility and says my hard drive won't mount, and therefore I have to go in to the Apple store.

Apple store: Genius turns on my laptop holding, I think, the N button, and all hardware things check out green. With disk utility he IS able to get into my Mac hard drive, just viewing the contents of each folder takes forever to load. So he suggests I go to a place specializing in data recovery. He says since Windows still works there's a good chance my HD is fine, but to go to the place where they can back up the data and then reinstall the Mac side.

Specialty place: says data backup will set me back at least $175, and then who knows how much for reinstalling everything (he says he'd have to reinstall both the Windows and Mac sides), and replacing/repairing physical parts.

So my many questions are:
-What in the hell would cause Windows to work just fine and Mac to not work? Is this a hardware problem or a problem with the hard drive?
-Should I shell out the money for the data backup/parts replacement/re-installation, or should I just buy some cheap shell of a Macbook on Craigslist and stick my hard drive in there? I mean, there's no guarantee after backing up my data that by reinstalling Mac everything's going to be back in working order.
-Is there any way I can back this data up myself? The guy at the Apple store mentioned that there's some software, but that (of course) it's better for people who specialize in doing this to do it. I can only access the Windows side of my laptop, can I access my Mac files while on Windows and transfer my files to an external HD?

 

[drummingcraig]

I would recommend trying to boot your laptop as a FW drive again from another computer. If the Apple Genius was able to mount it then its possible that there could be an issue with the HD being damaged, but if you can get it to work you may be able to copy the contents on your own. There's no need for you to pay someone $175 to do this for you.

I would at least try this yourself first. If that doesn't work...not sure what to suggest. Replacing the HD on the unibody's is fairly easy. You could always resort to replacing the HD, reinstalling OSX from the backup discs and see if that fixes things (you would of course have to partition and install the windows stuff too, but that is not terribly difficult).

EDIT:

I just re-read your questions...

I would focus on the HD. Chances are that is what most likely could've gotten damaged in the fall. I may be reaching here, but if you were in OSX when the fall happened that partition may have gotten damaged (read/write head may have impacted that part of the disc, etc). That would explain why you can boot from the Windows partition. Again - just a wild guess.

I definitely wouldn't spend the money on another computer with the idea of putting your existing drive into it (see previous paragraph as to why).

I would venture to say that is is most likely a hardware problem. If not your HD then something else (my money is still on the HD).

As for accessing your OSX data from Windows, I honestly don't know. I with normal partitions you can see all of them from OSX, but I've never used bootcamp so I don't know if the same is true.