Put the drive in a USB drive case and plug it into a PC, See if you can access it that way and the files it contains, Then either copy them to CDRs using a "burner", or drag and drop them on to the PC's My Documents Folder. Then reinstall the  drive in your laptop. You can clear the drive completely in a number of different ways(all done in DOS) and since Windows has not loaded, no login is necessary. What OS are you trying to reinstall  and do you have the necessary CD?