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Okay, let's take this discussion back where it belongs. I would recommend that you use a barebones system to attempt a data recovery - or as close to barebones as you can get. Ideally, it should have a main hard drive with XP and no background applications running - with ample space for recovering your files onto, and a floppy drive - no opticals, Zip drives, etc. It should have no addon cards except a video card - no PCI extender cards, sound cards, network cards, etc. Ideally, the main drive should be a SATA or an IDE on the primary all by itself, and the problem drive should be on the secondary IDE all by itself. If this sounds like a test bench setup, that would be ideal. The more ram and the faster the processor it has, the faster it can do its thing.
Install your data recovery applications and try them. The first one I'd try is the free PC Inspector. If that doesn't work, then it's time to move on to more heavy duty stuff like Ontrack. Data recovery can take a LONG time - when I've had to use Ontrack, it's taken over 12 hours just to generate a recovery report much less do an actual recovery. I'm sure there are other data recovery apps out there, but those are the only 2 I've used other than Badcopy Pro, which is a light duty one designed for removable media and flash memory. If you can't get results using anything you come up with, your only remaining option is send the drive off to a data recovery company and getting a second mortgage to pay for raw platter recovery.
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