A friend has a embedded system(korg recorder) with a ata drive in it, that crashed. We are trying to come up with ways to retrieve the data off of the drive.

I'm asking in security as this seems like it would be close to forensics, hence security.

Hints on software for linux to help either recover files, move files, copy/clone the drive? I'm not so concerned about the korg's os on the drive, as we can create a new blank drive and install that, its the data that is critical, that needs to be recovered.

The original korg os was only recognizing drives up to 100gbs so i'm guessing this might be a fat16 filesystem if that helps. well, that and the program installed to the drive to run it in the korg is an exe.

Help!

My first advice is to take a copy with ddrescue
Embedded system you say - so probably you can't start the system or boot from livecd? If it's an ata drive you could try taking it out and putting it in a regular computer.
With ddrescue the drive do not need to be mounted - best is not to with a broken drive! ddrescue reads raw data, giving you an exact copy of the drive. When you have that, put away the drive and work only with a copy of the image. If you work directly with the drive you might spoil it even more! Working with a copy means you can try anything you want without risk.

that's exactly my thoughts, as we might be able to initialize the drive os again, but don't want to try for fear of losing the data. any other tools to recover data are welcome.. thanks

drive is already on my desk awaiting a new drive to mirror to