this drive is doing really weird things! I've searched everywhere on the net for someone that has had a similar experience, but have found none. so i'm going to post here again with the updates to see if anyone can give me some other directtion to look in. so here is what's happened so far:

1: the drive does get picked up in the bios it hangs for about 10 seconds.
2: with Media Tools, HD dup and R-studio emergency i am able to see serial, firmware, partion table start stop(r-studio only) and total LBA. this is the part that's confusing as surely if it was a head issue it should not have all this except if the SA is stored on a side with a good head.
2B: none want to image the drive MTL has read errors like HD DU and R-studio images 650mb in 8 hours then has read errors.
3: MHDD scans the drive it has a lot of 500ms plus blocks but it still scans. which makes no sense as no other software reads.
4: drive is very slow in initializing. HD DU picks it up all correct firmware, but select the drive and you got to do it 3 or 4 times cause you get a drive not ready error the same error when trying to image.

so that's about it, if i could use the ATOF command on MHDD but i have no idea how to make it write the files to another drive. the smart shows that there are 462 reallocated sectors but overall rating says good! There is no damage to the platters all filters are clear there are now funny noises or clicking. drive spins fine and stays spinning surely if it were preamp or head it should click. what do you guys think? you don't have to tell me precisely i'd like to figure it out, but some direction would be nice...LOL thanks

Clone your drive sector-by-sector. Use software that understands how to work around bad sectors.

Some freeware cloning tools are ...

ddrescue: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html
dd_rescue: http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/
HDClone: http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

Comparison of ddrescue and dd_rescue:
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Dd_rescue

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

The problem is elsewhere. If you keep going on with attempts the drive will soon be a STM0000000RIP. The fact all the free stuff give same result would suggest to do something else, but you don't have the right HW GEAR. At your own risk, it's a matter of luck .

i have tried ddrescue it has the same result also can view the drive fdisk -l and lshw -c disk but very slow probably take a year image, and like Blackst says it will not survive. cloning it forward or reverse has the same result so i'm coming to the conclusion that it's firmware. i was able to create a dos partition on a 500 gig drive and i am currently running MHDD ATOF command it's slow but it's the only software that will wait for the drive bsy status to drop before it reads it's next block. so hopefully i'lll beable to at least get 40gig or so from the drive which should have the files i need. come to the conclusion no matter how much you try and learn about MFT'S, FAT'S and partition structures you only as good as your most expensive tool...

If it were a firmware problem, then the drive would be inaccessible. The fact that you can image the drive, however slowly, means that this is not the case.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

true. i had another working drive here so i did a head swap to be sure and low and behold problem is still the same only slight improvement as now Media Tools reads the drive but shows 20967 hours till completion, LOL, 800 days for extraction. So the problem seems to be a degradation of the platter surface that would bring me to HW imaging territory.just really weird that a drive of that age can have such a bad surface. I am speaking to deepspar to get an imager, but it's difficult where i am as there are no agents locally.