Was the laptop on when it crashed (i.e., the internal disk was spinning)???
Whenever a drive falls while in operation I am worried of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crashThis is less of an issue if it were off (and, in theory, the heads were parked away from the rotating platter.)
A nice thing in some laptops (I know its present in some ThinkPads) is that they have an accelerometer to detect when the machine is falling and park the head in response.
