you could try plugging the hard drive into a pc and use some hard drive tools on it to see if it is recoverable or not but this may corrupt the ps3 data on it. If it was still working you could back an image of the drive up to and external drive from the ps3 itself but as above i dont think you can image the drive yourself through windows ect.
You can just plug a new hard drive in and format it in the ps3 to its file system and then re download any bought content from the psn store. You will loose any saved games tho which is the bummer but a good oportunity to upgrade the hard drive to a 250/500Gb drive tho.
