Unmountable boot volume

Hello,

I get an unmountable boot volume error when my laptop refuses to start up. Power supply was removed when previously shutting down, so I assume this is the cause of my problem. Can't boot up in Safe mode. Computer guy said the hard drive was done, but BIOS recognizes it, and I can hear the hard drive continue to spin as it restarts itself over and over. Is it possible that the windows xp recovery disc just needs to be reloaded? Will this repair the problem? On a related issue, when I go to the C prompt and type "dir" no files appear. The computer does give me the option to restore to factory status, however I don't want to lose my files. I would appreciate some advice!
thank you.