Data recovery question

Ok, the usual... data recovery.

Here's the current specs -

1 80Gb drive (Windows OS or C: drive).
1 300Gb drive
1 300 Gb drive (which is now a paperweight).

Basic MOBO / RAM setup and such... not a MOBO issue though.

Older PC setup had a 40Gb drive where the 80Gb was.

It all happened with a quick restart. Then - Windows would not boot - kept restarting. So, I tried to do Safe mode... no go. I get my install disk and go to repair console. BAM - BSOD NTFS.SYS (can't remember the rest). Said "Oh well" to old system drive and grabbed a spare hard drive and formatted that. Ok, good to go...

NOPE.

When I finished formatting spare drive, I reconnected the two 300Gb drives. Windows behaves just like before (after a solid install) - reboots... BSOD... yadda yadda. I finally narrow it down to one of the 300Gb drives... as no matter where I place it in the IDE chain... it causes failure.

Ok - so - it WILL post in the BIOS, but when Windows (whether from install disk or OS) tries to access it... poof insta-boot or BSOD.

This drive is rather important to me. No letters to my auntie and such. This was my complete 50Gb MP3 collection and my music creation drive as well... lots of raw wav files and many session files from songs in the works. So, you can see that it's important for me. And trust me... lesson learned. When I get things back to some semblance of order... I'm backing things up and creating a server PC.

Now - here's my question (FINALLY)... if I can see it in the BIOS... shouldn't I be able to get to this drive somehow... DOS... something?

Now - I can't do the "install a program to my current OS drive and try to recover files..." because the second I add the bad drive to the chain - poof - no boot. Is there something I can try to install on the actual bad disk... to see if I can see the files are still on there?

Oh yeah - I DID try to run the XP install on that drive... in hopes of creating a partition and installing... something, anything that would raise my hopes of recovering these files without having to send it away. You guys get what I was trying.

So, before sending this away to be recovered (about 90Gb of info)... is there anything you guys can think of? Also, if I do end up sending this away... any clue how much 90Gb would run me?

Ok... thanks for bearing with the long question. All suggestions will be thanked and appreciated.