Another option that I have had some success with is booting into the computer with a live distribution of Linux from the CD Drive. I have used Mepis to retrieve photos on my wife's computer and save them to an external drive.
The nice thing about this trick, is the Linux OS runs from the disk and uses your RAM but leaves you hard drive alone. You can find more information about Mepis at
Code:
http://www.mepis.org/
Good luck!