Initially I thought it was an April fools over on facebook but has Ady actually had his hard-drive crash? Or is it an April fools?
Link; http://www.facebook.com/swrevisited - Latest update
Ady if you are reading, (and I do realise you are highly proficient on computers) part of my job is as aIT technician for a charity and have had to recover hard-drives before. Often, I've found you can recover everything from a failed drive (regardless of cause)...
There are a couple of options;
Firstly, which is the easiest and cheapest, is to download a USB linux installation and create a linux install USB, which you can run from the Bios and it will run off the USB. DO NOT INSTALL - but see if you can access the the problem hard-drive from the Ubuntu flash disk and move files onto say an external hard-disk. Link here; http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
If that does not work or, it can't do what you want to there are a couple of other options;
If you have another windows computer you can install the failed hard drive to, as a secondary drive to that. (You can also purchase multiple plug and plag hard-drive readers - I have a high performance lap-top I use when fixing hard-drives, which means I need the USB hard-drive reader). Here would be an example of one after a quick google; http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock
There are various hard-drive restore programmes you can use from here which range from free to paid for varieties. Here is a good example of a freeware program that I have found to be good;
http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?language=1
It has a couple of options, you will I suspect either need "find lost drive" or "recover lost data". There are paid for variations but in all honesty I've never needed them.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/ - Also has lists of freeware you may find useful, it reviews the different products in an area.
Related Drive Recovery and file undelete;
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-data-recovery-file-undelete-utility.htm
Strangely if all else fails, I have managed to get two hard-drives that I could not do anything with to be recoverable after I put them in the freezer.
Hope that helps, if you have any further questions please let me know.