That pretty much says what the problem is.
The next step would be taking the hard disk apart and connect it to a working computer for saving his photos and other valuable works to an external disk. I like to use Linux for those operations, because it doesn't care about passwords and ownership. Actually, you might be able to use a bootable Linux DVD or USB stick to access the corrupt hard disk through his own computer, most likely having to change the boot order and other boot options (Legacy, if you're using UEFI) to get the Linux running.
After saving the valuable personal stuff, a hard disk test could be run and if/when it fails, checking if you can get it replaced by warranty.
