My IBM Thinkpad R40 laptop stopped working.The IBM

Unless the hard disk itself is damaged, data should be perfectly recoverable. This does not mean that any USB device will be able to read the unit. Some external attachments I found were not capable of reading large disks, or required those disks to be formatted while in the attachment, meaning that the disk addressing mode wasn't autodetected at all.

On the other hand, the disk MIGHT be damaged. Sorry to mention it but it's a possibility. Were those damaged IC on the board connected to the disk I/O system? (Or, maybe, the ICs only seemed to be damaged, but were actually working - it was the HD which was damaged all the time, and the system rebooted as soon as it tried to access the disk).

I'd suggest having the disk connected with a 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter to a Linux machine as secondary hard disk. This will allow direct talk to the disk unit, bypassing external devices and the like, and allowing direct access to the partition, with a much more informative error logging than Windows systems are generally equipped with.

The only way is to take it to a hard drive recovery specialist center.
Some big repair shops offer this service and it can be expensive so ask for a quote first.