Bit of a Hard drive emergency..

[Zipppy]

Just smash the motherboard a bit where the SATA 1 controller is, then try again.

Nah,
Now seriously speaking, try using an external HDD enclosure (I've done it with USB 2.0 countless times), and copy data to another hard drive if you have one/can with another OS (on a USB stick, like Ubuntu or some easy to use lightweight system). If not, I'd leave it to the professionals in data recovery.

I've had something similar, but putting it in an enclosure and backing stuff up from there would be my best guess as said above.