What he said! (Or she, as the case may be.)
I’ve used Linux live CDs to rescue data from failed Windows installs before. I’ve also used Linux to retrieve data from disks that Windows claimed were unreadable.
The data is safe, and can be easily off. Using a LiveCD is a good method of gaining access to it.
I would think one would like to recover the mbr and boot partition, testdisk is a great tool for that.
I charge $100.00 to do just that using just that.