Here WAS the PROBLEM:
----------------------------------
A Compaq Presario 900 laptop running XP home froze and rebooted.

Error message was something similar to "Boot disk error occurred" Press Ctrl+ALT+Del to restart. Upon reboot the same message.

Ran diagnostics at the Hitachi website and ran them
message received was "smart test failure- send drive to vendor"

Friend then found the recovery CD so placed that in and ran the Compaq recovery CD which took me to the C: prompt. Ran CHKDSK /R (it took about 24 hrs) moving 1% every 15 minutes.

Removed the CD and rebooted. Something about a TRAP error 6 showed on the screen as well as some Eax type things. Rebooted again, TRAP error 8 with "double fault" with more gibberish on screen.

I have spinrite and it says the drive is in bad shape and that the recovery option may take over 40 hours.
____________________________________________

Possible solutions:
1. Send off for data recovery: Cost $70-900
2. Conncect to desktop via 2.5 to 3.5 adapter or via 2.5 usb enclosure. Hope that XP recognizes the laptop HD. Wasn't to keen on this option as sometimes I can be a fumble fingers.
3. RUN KNOPPIX

THE SOLUTION: KNOPPIX

Ran knoppix, Knoppix was able to show the files copied some to a floppy.
Used a friends external Hard drive which Knoppix then recognized to transfer 9.6 GB (a few dll's didn't transfer) off of the computer. I was able to transfer following the posts I read here about NTFS (I used another laptop to setup a FAT32 on the External Hard Drive). And then enable writing on the External hard drive by changing the default options, unmounting and mounting.

The laptop is now on it's way back to Compaq as it was under warranty

You guys and Knoppix are great!