i've also used this with very good results:
GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD
when my drive started to die and wouldn't boot anymore, this is what i used to move the data to the new drive.
i believe you can do partition recovery, etc., and you can (probably) access your data and move it to a different drive/partition.
the live CD will boot to linux and you can work with it from there.
i do agree with dave that there is risk of data loss. good luck.