Does this mean I need a new hard drive?

[M6BrokeMe]

Hello all,
I have had problems with my laptop lately and now I need a clue.  My charger has a tip on the end which removable.  The cable has two pins on the end and the tip plugs onto it and the other end of the tip plugs into the laptop. 

Well.  I got the polarity wrong with the pins once and my laptop hated it.  There was a burnt smell in the air and it would no longer boot up. 
So I popped in a new mother board and ... nothing on the screen.  The LEDs lit up and I could hear the disc drive turning but blank screen.  Then I removed the HDD and gave to my friend so he could take the data off of it.  I decided to try booting without the HDD and voila!  The Bios screen came up. 

So now does that mean my new motherboard is OK and does this mean I need a new hard drive?  Am I missing something?

Please clue.
Thanks,
Paul

[DaveLembke]

Did your friend who is getting your data off that drive have any luck with it at all working for him?

If drive works for him then the drive is fine, but of the drive doesnt then the drive is cooked.

[strollin]

It could also mean the boot sector of the hdd got messed up so it would be possible that your friend could get data off the drive but you still wouldn't be able to boot from it.  How long did you wait for it to boot?  Did you get an error message saying something like "Can't find OS"?

If it's just the boot sector, then you should be able to repair it and have the drive bootable again.