I never had a "nonrecoverable" from it, but I've had enough bad experience, as I'd rather not chance anything anymore.

Personally, I'd make a loopback writeable filesystem on another machine and and rsync everything from the laptop to the loopback filesystem.

Then when you've installed stuff grabs the stuff you need from the loopback filesystem. Or transfer the loopback filesystem to the new drive and mount it there and go and grab things as you need it.

There are indeed so many ways you can proceed, its not even funny. Easiest plan would be to have the drives both spinning on the same machine and copy from there.

But, anyway.