If you're having a hardware failure on the hard drive I wouldn't count on any normal software tools to recover the data. Sounds like you are because you're getting software crashes when you try to access the drive. You can try another tool like knoppix, but I don't think they'll see more than you can with your boot CD.

I'd go with what you have and recover any of the data that you can see from your boot disk. If you're hearing a grinding on the drive you should do this sooner than later.