Unibody White MacBook- HD failure? Cannot boot after email hack.

[chagoi]

Hello! My mother's unibody white MacBook will not get past the grey apple and spinning gear when you first boot up the computer. This was after she opened a link in an email from a friend who had her email compromised. Now I'm getting spam emails with the same link from my mother's hacked email, and her computer won't even get to the login screen. I took it to the genius bar only to be told it was likely HD failure, but the windows partition works without a hitch! What could this be? A trojan? Is there any way to retrieve data (really just pictures) before I attempt to reinstall OS X?

Thanks!

 

[macdatadrive]

If you have another mac, you might want to give a shot at Target Disk Mode.

This is a Support Apple Website. I would do a direct link, but I don't know how.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Hope this helps!

EDIT: It added the link automatically!