Recover information from a disk otherwise unreadable or unmountable

Standard

Install dd_rescue (not ddrescue – although that might also work)

copying everything to a file:

dd_rescue /dev/hda1 target-file.img

Mounting the file:

losetup /dev/loop0 target-file.img
mount /dev/loop0 /home/you/dir

or

mount -o loop target-file.img /home/you/dir