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Always have your content on RAID 5 or RAId 1, so you don't lose it.
If the drive is recognized by the BIOS, just plug it to a machine with a bigger drive and dump it to a big file:
dd if=/dev/drive of=/tlace/to/the/drive/image.img
Then you can mount that image and/or work with it using recovery tools. that way you will not need to force the crashed drive hours and hours of extra work. also if you screw things, you are still working on a drive image and not on the original one.
If the drive is not recognized by the BIOS, the expensive option is to unplug the drive and give it to some data recovery service.
If the Drive is recognized by the BIOS and does not spin properly then you can cool it. Put it into a plastic bag (preferably one isolated like the ones that come with any computer part) and then put it into the freezer. Aftyer about 3 hours take it out and plug it to the computer. Chances are that you will have a perfectly working drive for about 30 - 45 minutes or you will have a completely crashed drive.
I learned data backup lesson the hard way lots of years ago. Now all my important data is on at least two computers with RAID each one... have you seen four (4) HDs in RAID crash at the same time? I have, and the result was not nice.
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