If my hard drive disappears and is no longer running what are my options?

Question

this is a last resort. Dropped the MBP. it wouldn't boot up. wouldn't boot in any mode, did the resets in order. safe mode failed to work as did all the disk util recommendation. It finally booted off the install DVD. Hard drive icon there. Did an archive and install. I did all the disk util prior to  archive and install. permissions and disk checked out ok.
Attached a USB external. started backing things up manually. SU came up and i did the combo update to 10.5.8
Restarted MBP and the drive died, not even getting to login screen, onlly endless spinning at startup screen identical to problem after dropping it. installed Leopard on external. tried to set startup disk from internal. icon not there as if drive did not exist.
After HD crash, ran diskutil in verbose mode, device not present when i used the name,
note: this is the second external drive. i did the combo update on the external and it also died. couldn't see the icon. booted into single user mode. device no found. Again, safe mode failed to work as did all the disk util recommendation.
at this time, the external is leopard 10.5, no update, firefox running with adobe flash update.
1. SU combo update, never again. use the one from the Apple website in all future updates.
2. physical inspection of inside revealed no loose connections, broken cables or wires.
3. dropped the MBP on the side of the optical drive which i had to repair and reinstall. works fine now. PRAM battery in good order.
4. looked at every discussion from every forum on here with varying results, all dead ends.
if the drive isn't spinning or responding, is it dead or frozen? is $99 for diskwarrior the next step? Will it even see the internal drive, since no other freeware or shareware recovery apps have been able to see the internal HD.
what are my options? i had no backups made, i have no firewire cable or drive, i didn't know about time machine, i absolutely must have the drive restored, or the data.

Answer 1

diskwarrior manual:
To build a graph for the directory of a disk, all of the following must be true:
1)The disk must appear on the desktop.
2)The disk must be an HFS (Mac OS Standard) or HFS Plus disk (Mac OS Extended).
3)The disk must be locally attached.
4)There must not be any detected hardware problems with the disk.
disk does not appear on HD. therefore i have to assume there is physical damage to internal drive, pull it
install a new one and send the old one to data recovery.
this here concludes today's discussion on "*** were you thinking when you didn't have a back up"
also, investing in Firewire drives and cables is selling out to proprietary mandates that Apple thought up as one more way to tie up its users to Apple theology. reason one i have refused to put the money out for it.
guess the man wins.