The linux live CD idea could work. You need to download the iso file, burn it to a DVD and boot up with that. You wont have to install it if you get something like Mint 17.1 Cinnamon. It will be slow to run but it will show all your partitions as separate drives. The problem is they wont be called 'C; or 'D' etc. They will be called 'sda1', 'sda2' or 'sdb1' or something like that. You might be able to identify them by size. You should be able to transfer files from the hard drive to a USB stick. or external drive.