If I can't pull the hard drive out right there, I use a live usb stick of either ubuntu or CAINE/Trinity Rescue CD, then run smartmontools short test to see if it is really dying. I also try mounting the partition and checking dmesg output. If I can see that the hard drive is dying, I pull the drive out and run ddrescue on another machine, until I can pull off a good image. If it's simply a partition issue, and I can't mount it or repair the filesystem right away, then I run testdisk. Of course, a good chkdsk on an NTFS partition can almost always help. DDRESCUE RULES!!! NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH that OTHER DD_RESCUE!!!

Okay, how about a universe with human/pig hybrids, immortal transhumanists who eventually digitize, true space travel (cryo-sleep for 300 years, anyone?), and ancient space-faring worms escaping bots bent on eating intelligent races the universe over?

sounds pretty cool to me. also, prefects are pretty awesome.