Forget the XP recovery console. It has very limited capabilities for
copying files, mostly intended to manually restore a good copy of a system
file to the Windows directory.
Instead, think about booting your PC by something other than XP.
Choices include:
(1) Windows PE CD, although they are hard to find, since they are intended
for IT pros. Try a web search.
(2) Bart's PE CD, which you make on a fully operational PC with XP
installed. Bart's take a while to make, but is worth having. Also, be sure
to test it on the same PC it was created to be sure that it works. If you
get to a windows-like desktop, you have succeeded.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
(3) KNOPPIX "live" CD, which is a free download as an ISO image. It is a
large download, about 700 Meg for the CD and a few Gig for the DVD. The
difference is that the DVD has more applications. The CD will suffice for
rescuing data. KNOPPIX is a flavor of LINUX, with very good intrinsic
support for much hardware, in fact, better than XP itself. "live" means
that it runs from CD without installing on the hard drive. KNOPPIX has a
windows-like file manager, supports USB and firewire, and version 5 can
write to disks formatted as FAT32 or NTFS, among others.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html