My son did this - spilled coffee onto an almost new laptop just as he was completing a rather important final paper. Of course, he hadn't backed anything up. He had to redo the paper in one day and ended up getting a passing grade but certainly not as well as he would have done had he been able to turn in the original which he had spent several weeks working on. It turned out it was just the keyboard that was affected, and he is now able to use the laptop by hooking up an external keyboard. But if a computer expert looked at yours and said the hard drive is messed up that is a different story. What you did is VERY easy to do - I have gone to sleep numerous times while using a laptop, and I often drink at the same time - usually tea but that would be just as bad. My sympathies!