update

An update on my "ring of death".  So come to find out its the HDD...its either not making good enough connection, or some such shit, I messed with it for a while last night, and slammed it into the xbox and held it in, and It came on fine, I left it on, ran to gamestop, bought a memory card, saved our profiles and some game data to it.  It will run find off the memory card and with the HDD taken off, but as soon as I try to put it back on, I get the error code E68.

I have a couple questions:

#1  Is the HDD covered in Microsofts new extended warrenty?  or am I just out of luck, and have to go buy a new HDD?

#2  is there anywhere besides Microsoft, who could possibly fix, and or retrieve all my data off the bad HDD, and transfer it to a new one, I know there is a transfer cable, but thats $40, on top of the $60 for a 20gb HDD

Any suggestions would be great, I am sure that most of the 360 owners have been through, or know someone who has been through it.