Sony vaio laptop pcg-fr215h drives major prob

Hello,
I'm having a major problem with my laptop.
The dvd drive does not recognise discs at all. It would also not recognise an external drive when it was plugged in.
The laptop is also unable to format usb drives when inserted, even though they already work on other computers.
I have been to pc world and they told me i need to restore to factory settings.
The problem i have is that i am unable to get my pictures i want to keep from the hard drivwe before i restore factory settings.
Is restoring indeed the solution?
Is there anything else i should try first?
I deleted upper and lower filters previously but to no avail.

It's getting pretty desperate now!

cheers

Gadey