SUCCESS! (sorta)

[teddog]

I finally managed to pull off my files from my almost dead hard drive. It took about three hours, thirty minutes of which was spent trying to get the thing to boot. It only worked in safe mode and that was with some wrangling, but once I got it running, it only crashed once and I think I've recovered everything worth recovering.

Completely killed my afternoon, but I now have some beloved files back, so it's all good.