WD 250 GB, XP SP3, which Mint tool to solve part problem?

[jazz.h]

Hi huys!

Now I know this has to do very little with Mint, more with Linux partition tools. But I'll give it a try.

WD 250 GB sata hdd, with WinXP SP3 installed, has freezed during xp session. Upon hard reset and boot again, login screen couldn't be shown, it boots until that point, than stops. I tried safe mode, it stops while loading file mup.sys. I tried from dos with HDD Sentinel, quick check says temp 52, max 60. Bad sectors 6. Health 88%. MiniXP doesn't load. Gparted Linux os loads and sees all 3 partitions, but it can't read anything from them.

I swithed it off, checked inside, all the fans are working, nothing suspicious... after a while tried again to boot into safe mode, now it loads but very slow, system partition C is very slow when copying files from it to external usb, D partition also, E partition shows no label in windows explorer and none of the files or directories can be read.

I need to save files from partition E at the 1st place. All 3 part are ntfs.

I wanted to boot from liveusb with some of the Mints, what version would you suggest, considering the fact that I would need all the disc tools for reading smart params and perhaps fix some disc/partition problems?

Or any other suggestion would be highly appreciated...

Thanks.