OT: dying disk - data recovery recommendations

[KS <lists04@fastmail.fm>]

Hi,

I have a friend's G4(PPC) which seems to have a dying disk. He had run
the Apple disk utility and it reported and error with the IDE disk. The
machine just halts sometimes, with the disk trying to read something and
the only way to shut down the machine was the power button.

I tried doing an rsync to a remote directory and it made the hard disk
busy after sending about 350MB (total home data is around 6GB). I have
shut down the machine and trying to list various options of salvaging
the data from the HDD. I was reading up on dd_rescue (had tried it on a
couple of CDs earlier), foremost, and Sleuthkit. Does anyone have any
recommendations on how to proceed in this case? Any live CD(PPC) which
will be more helpful than the systemrescueCD (0.2.0 PPC)?

Thanks,
/KS