Need help with dying drive/restoring data

[Jonathon McKitrick]

Hi all,

Help!  My laptop drive seems to be dying, and while I did keep backups, the
last one was a bit old.

When I boot up, the drive makes clanking sounds I've never heard before, and
never finishes the load.  I'm going to make a rescue disk, but does anyone
have a strategy for how I could handle the delicate job of getting my
updated data off the drive without making matters worse?  So far, I figure I
will boot the rescue disk and try to mount the filesystems.

jm
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