WD hard drives are great....but I would really recommend getting a high quality docking station for like $30 or so. Then you can stick any hard drive in it you want and as many as you want forever.

This is the one I got, Thermaltake...good stuff. No purdy blue light thou. But it will take 3.5 and 2.5 drives....this option is cheaper too with great reviews beyond mine of course.

 

Update: Just for kicks I swapped the old drive out in the laptop, and it actually started! I quickly dragged and dropped all of the pictures to the other computer through the network and quickly grabbed the PST file for all my outlook files and folders. Then I shut everything down and re-installed the new drive. My goal now is to get the external HD and get all of this backed up the right way. I feel pretty good about it all now. But for a few desperate hours I was ready to climb a tower.