Getting data off of a dead Mac mini

I have a two year old Mac mini. It's never been the fastest horse in the stable. Tuesday night, I was getting even more spinning beach ball that usual. On Monday morning, it was even worse. I had a spinning beach ball for 10 minutes, and I shut the computer down by holding down the on button for 5 seconds. I ran the Apple Hardware Test. Very quickly, it told me that I had error "2STF/8/3:ATA-100 ata-6-Master" in "Mass Storage." Using a different computer, I looked around a bit on this forum, and figured that this wasn't going to be a cheap and easy fix. Today I bought a new iMac (which I'm working from right now). I want to know if I can get any data off of my old mac mini, and then if I can eventually fix it so that it can be a back-up computer for me to leave at home.
I borrowed a firewire from a friend, and tried to use my mac mini as a target drive. Unfortunately, the Mac OS 10.4 startup/apple hardware test disk seems to be irretrievably stuck in my mac mini. When I connected the computers with the firewire (and started the mac mini up, pressing T), all I got was an icon of the startup disk on my iMac's desktop. Is there another way I can try to access the data on my Mac mini?
My Mac mini is running 10.4.11 and my brand new iMac is running 10.5.
Any ideas?

2.5" IDE hard drives which can be put into a Mac mini aren't all that expensive (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST94811AB/ has a $50 40Gb example, and the same supplier has other options for more storage) but replacing the drive yourself is a bit fiddly and not for the faint-hearted! It's not all that difficult however, so resurrecting your mini may not be all that expensive or hard.
Meanwhile, it may be that some of your data can be rescued from the drive, but you'll need a utility such as Prosoft's Data Rescue II (http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php at a cost of $99) to try. Unless the drive has suffered a major hardware failure, which that error message tends to suggest, it could be put into an external enclosure and attempts made to recover data.

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