Grub Error 17?!

My desktop has died. Looks like hard drive failure (long delays on hdd detection, then grub error 17, can't mount partition). I'm pretty used to this, seems to happen to me biannually. The Ubuntu live CD won't even come up, so my chances for data recovery seem pretty slim. The worst thing is that I just downloaded but have not yet watched two iTunes purchases (yesterday's Daily Show and Colbert). I also stand to lose quite a bit of work for my contracts as well as GSoC. Time to get out the screwdriver...