There are computer service centers that would be happy to extract the data for a (hefty) fee; a true geek would be the one working at center, not taking his or her drive there.
There are inexpensive programs that you can use to do this - it helped us with a personnel matter quite a few years back - I think every IT person should have such a program and every teacher should understand that it is possible for such a program to be used. I teach my students that everything ever saved on a hard drive can be retrieved - be careful.
This is the presentation where I talk about the importance of creating and sharing, focusing on iPod touch and three types of products: comics, animations, and audio podcasts.