Hard drive failed

Start your computer and hit the F8 key. If it lets you get that far then you can backup your files to a USB drive. If you can;t get that far then like halljohnp said, your hard drive failed so you can't start it. Call the person who told you that back and ask him how you are supposed to do that if your hard drive is dead? Then let us know because that would be a good trick to know.

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If your hard drive failed you need to get another one.
Reason if it will not boot you cannot use a USB one

Depending on your hard drive type IDE or SATA you can get an adapter here:
After that you can just insert your failed hard drive and use whole thing as an external hard drive i.e. connect it to usb port of another PC and fransfer the data
Good Luck