Download knoppix and burn to a CD.
[link|http://www.knoppix.org/|http://www.knoppix.org/]
Make sure you get the English version.
Buy a new disk the same size or LARGER than the oroginal disk.
Place both in a computer.
Make sure you deal with master / slave issues if they share a
bus with each other or with the bootable CD/DVD drive.
Boot via the knoppix CD.
You need to figure out which disk
is which from knoppix's perspective.
This is VERY important.
Assuming you have 2 IDE disks, the 1st one found as a primary
on the 1st IDE controller will be /dev/hda, and the 1st primary
on the 2nd controller SHOULD be /dev/hdc.
You must identify the 2 disks.
If you are not a 100% sure, you can figure it out by accessing
them.
Open SEVERAL terminal windows up.
In the 1st one, type:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=32k
This will start to read the disk and throw away the data.
You probably will not know which disk, though, unless you
are really sensitive to the noise.
So, wait about 10 seconds, and type the SAME command
in the 2nd window.
This will trigger the same read, but since the disk head
is busy, it will force the head back to the beginning of the disk.
As each command is running, it will force the head to seek
back and forth. At this point you will KNOW which disk
is which. It will be chattering like crazy.
Do it for each /dev/hd{a,b,c,d,e,f} until you are sure which
one is which.
Then you want to copy the entire disk over.
If the source disk is /dev/hda and the destination disk is
/dev/hdc, type:
dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdc bs=32k
Which this command completes, the target disk is a mirror
image of the 1st disk.
Use this disk for any attempted recovery.
Repeat if the recovery effort fails.