aspire one kav10 wont boot

hello everyone, ive searched and searched and cant come up with any usefull information at all, one day i went to turn it on and it came up and said check cable connection, cannot boot device insert bootable disc and contioue, ive searched and found that this is a fairly common issue, but no one gave a repair procedure, there is valuble data on the hdd that i would dearly love to recover if possible, anyone have any suggestions on what i can do? i have no disc or anything as nothign came with the pc, the place i purchased it from tried to sell me the recovery disc's that they had made for 60 dollars, i declined as i thaught this was steep for a copied cd anyways is there anyplace i can download a recovery disc? i have an external multi-drive that i can use. thanks alot

 

You didn't make a recovery disc when you first turned on the laptop when you first got it?