How to recover files from a crashed hard drive

I believe my hard drive is in the early stages of crashing. Last night I was using my Macbook Pro and was running safari and microsoft word when all the sudden the computer froze up and I got the spinning wheel. I waited for about 5 minutes hoping the wheel would go away and after no avail decided to turn the computer off by holding the power button. I waited a couple minutes to let it cool down and then I rebooted it and I was then given the jumping folder with a ? on it. I did some research and found that this basically means your hard drive was crashing. So I read a solution online that if you hit the Option button while the Mac is booting up it will allow you to select a hard drive. I did this and luckily I was able to select my main hard drive and the computer booted up, but once I had logged in and was at the desktop screen the computer was very slow and when I tryed to open Finder I was once again given the spinning wheel. The wheel continued to spin for a solid 10 minutes and the screen finally went black with just the spinning wheel. So I once again decided to turn off the computer by holding the power button. I have gone and talked to 2 different tech support stores and both are pretty sure that the hard drive is failing, which I pretty much already knew, and that it is going to be around 75$ to recover the lost information and another 125$ to install a brand new hard drive.
However, I have been using Time Machine to back up my computer but I have not backed it up since August 23rd which was about 2 weeks ago. So I would lose all the files that I have made in the last 2 weeks basically and since I started school I have done quite a bit of work and so I do not want to lost the files.
What solutions can you come up with that I could use to possibly recover my files?
Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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**Click the KUDOS thumb up on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

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(117246)

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How to recover files from a crashed hard drive

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