Old laptop died, syncing an iPhone 4s to new laptop without losing data.

Hi, my laptop recently died, I have an iphone 4s thats about a month old and never made a backup to my external HD before the laptop broke. I have my music library saved to the external HD from a couple of months ago, but no back up of the phone itself. I don't want to lose things like my contacts, pictures and messages when synching to my new laptop- is there any way to avoid this happening? Would using the iCloud feature help to avoid this, as I am unsure if it will.
Also with the laptop breaking unexpectedly I didn't de-authorize the laptop for itunes, will this effect things?
Thanks for any help.

Just because the laptop "died" does not mean the harddrive is dead.  Unless the harddrive actually failed, it should be possible to simply extract it and put it into a drive case to access the data.
Then the iTunes folder can be copied to the new system and salvage everything.
If that is not possible, contacts should be synced with a supported application on the computer or to a cloud service.  Unless you are solely dependent upon the iPhone for your contacts, they are not included in the backup.
All media and apps should be in your backup on your external drive, granted some will not be there.  If you are in the US, the music can be re-downloaded via iCloud.  Apps can always be re-downloaded at no additional cost.

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