There is a nice little Windows app capable of reading "backwards"
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jaclaz
Is this x64?
Does this happen to be a Passport drive? I recently had one which was encrypted and couldn't be imaged. I ended up having to plug it in directly after trying various kinds of imagers and writeblockers to no avail. Plugging it in opened a program which asked for a password. Luckily I managed to guess the password in about 10 guesses (his hint was 'my truck' and he drove a GMC Yukon). Once in it I used a program called Fusus, which is part of the new ILookPI. Fusus allows you to create images from running computers.
Not the ideal way of doing business but I did what I had to.
Just an idea.
Dave Allen
Waveland PD.
Sounds to me like your drive is having problems with a firmware. Unfortunately no software is going to to the trick. So don't waste your time with any of the so called recovery software's out there. If at all they will just kill the drive. The firmware problem needs to be fixed before any data can be salvaged.
Do any of the following WD sounds help ID the issue?
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what is the drive claiming to be called in the BIOS ?
its likely that something has corrupted (or is making unreadble) the system track.
corruption may be resolved with some heavyweight equipment (PC3000).
if its a hardware problem then you'll be needing to replace that, however I'd have a look first with pc3k before following that route.
If the data is valuable then send it to a proffessional DR company, if you're treating this as a learning experience then head over to hddguru they're a lot more clued up on this kind of thing.