I have a WinXP laptop with a failing hard disk. On the laptop, I went
to the recovery
console and attempted to chkdsk the dsk, but the chkdsk stopped at 25%
with
unrecoverable errors. I removed the disk and installed on another
WinXP system
using a USB storage adapter. On that system I can "see" the disk in
Windows Explorer
as the I: disk, but I cannot cd to it or execute commands against it.

I have not reinstalled Windows on the disk or otherwise reformatted
it. My objective
now is to recover as much of the disk files/content as possible. Can
someone tell
me the steps to attempt this, or point me to a link describing the
diagnostic steps
and/or utilities to try.

I'm a student and can't afford to take the disk to a data recovery
service. I could
buy recovery software if the price were reasonable.