Please help me use Ubuntu to retrieve sata from crashed computer.

[Philip Axer]

Hi,
this _FIRST_ thing I would do is to do a complete backup of you HDD. By 
mounting r/w or trying to recover lost data you could possibly destroy 
more than you restoring.
Boot whatever you want and make an 1:1 image of /dev/hda or whatever.
(man dd)
After this you may try to use Ubuntu live or Bart PE or another OS to 
try to restore your data. And if you failed or something went wrong, you 
can ever restore you backuped hdd information.

Philip