Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "on the fritz?" Perhaps you could use the old "drive in the freezer" trick to get the files you need off?

My wife's drive (as discussed above) appears to have completely died, sadly. Not sure if even the freezer trick will get it back, but I won't know until she brings the laptop home from her trip tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed, though, as she has a seven-page document of meeting notes on there that she hadn't gotten the chance to off-load to anything yet. She couldn't even email them to herself after the meeting, as for some reason the meeting rooms don't have any network access, and the laptop died somewhere between the meeting and her room. Ugh.