SSD failure, chances of recovery?

I have a Asus EeePC 900 with XP and the 16 gb SSD. Its my everyday beater computer so it did not really have anything critical on it so its not like I am going to go to great lengths to try and recover data or even save the machine, it was only around $200 new and it has worked well for 2 years but I sort of like a challenge and want to learn so if / when I do loose critical data I would have a greater chance of saving it. It was working normally and I shut the screen. I opened it back up later and it came up to the normal log in screen. I clicked on the log in and instead of the usual 2 short beeps it did a quick beep then seemed to stick on a stuttering beep. The mouse still worked but that is about it. I let it sit that way for about 15 mins and no change so I tried the power button, nothing, and the reset button on the back, still no change. Ended up removing the power. It came back up with the windows shut down wrong screen so I told it to start on last known good config. The windows start screen comes up then I get a quick blue screen that flashes by then it goes back to the initial bios boot screen and starts all over again. I have another identical working machine so I started swapping parts. Found the problem moves with the SSD. The SSD is not like the current ones where they share connectors and form factors with IDE or SATA drives, this one looks more like a ram card with a similar connector. I have an appercorn usb drive adapter with their bootable software. It loads but does not see the SSD. I also tried a few other bootable windows recovery programs and none of them see the internal SSD. The bios apparently sees it but that is about it. If I remove the SSD and try to boot from an external source I get farther through the boot process than I would without an external boot but it ends on a blue screen that says it has a problem and i should remove any new hard disc or controller and check for viruses. It seems like the drive is somewhat working because I do get the beginning of a windows boot and it seems like that must be coming off the drive so that is why I just figured part of the windows is corrupt. That does not seem to explain why none of the utilities can even see the drive or does it? I have a system recovery disc but have not yet tried it because I am still wondering if I can get my data back.

Any thoughts on other ways I could try and recover data? or is the drive just toast and I should just make backups more often and let this machine die and provide parts for the still working one?