5 month old Roamio Plus dead; data recovery

I purchased the Roamio Plus, transferred recordings to it from an old unit I knew was dying and have the capacity used at 85%. Yesterday, while watching a show, the unit stopped working. What had been playing froze. Finally a screen appeared that advised me to unplug and restart the unit. I did that and it has stayed at the startup screen since.



My question is getting the data. I so seldom have time to watch tv and now, although I could get another unit, I want the data on the existing drive. I'm sure it is a hard drive failure but since we have no way to backup what we record, another unit does not help me if I can't watch what I have already recorded.



I am very computer literate and wondered if anyone has ever removed the drive, tried to bypass the boot sector, and transfer the data to another drive. I did email weaknees and they advised that for $100 they would run a diagnosis on the unit but any parts, including a new drive is extra AND they would try to retrieve my data.



I am simply frustrated that a new machine would crash so fast AND that ,as a proponent of Backing up data, we have no way of doing this easily on the TIVO equipment.



All ideas are appreciated! Thanks.