Cool, cool. Will keep those in mind for the future, I bought a new hard drive slaved the flakey one, and managed to get all of the files copied over.
Five minutes later, I tried booting off the flakey one just to see, computer would not boot with it hooked up. Got halfway through ram check, reboot. Tried it on another computer, it got to about 1/4 way through around the 90 mb mark, and reboot.
Bizarre, I've never had a hard drive do this to me before. I will summarily rip it apart and turn it into an ashtray... or perhaps a paperweight as I'm trying to quit smoking. Or test to see how magnesium does burn through a hard drive. Or have a priest bless it, then I'll marinate it in irish whiskey and give it a proper wake.
Thanks for the help, and hope this thread stays on to help others who need some data recovery help.