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[Wirevix]

All right, to start off I'm going to say I won't be surprised if I'm told this is completely hopeless and there's nothing that can be done.  I've tried a whole ton of tricks to get the data off this drive, and absolutely nothing the internet can tell me--or, at least, that I can figure out how to Google with the right phrase--has helped at all.

A torrent was being downloaded onto this drive last night.  In the middle of it, Windows announced there was a write error, and the drive disconnected.  Either a nasty bug within the torrent or some improbable series of errors has led to, we presume, the drive being reduced to RAW state.

When the drive is plugged in, Windows 7 recognizes it as "Local Disk (G:)" and asks me if I would like to format it.  I decline.  G: will show up in Windows Explorer and in the Devices & Printers screen, but nowhere else.  Disk Manager does not believe in the existence of G:, nor do any recovery tools we've tried like Recuva or iCare.

Whenever anything attempts to access G:, instead of an error about it being in an unreadable format or some such, Windows makes the "USB device disconnected" and "USB device connected" sounds in rapid succession, and asks me once again to format the drive.  I assume this is why recovery programs can't even begin to get at it, as it's literally disconnecting itself the second they attempt to touch it.

Is there any possible way to get anything off of it, even if it's just a chunk of scrambled mess we'd have to take multiple hacks at to untangle?  Has anyone dealt with such a coy drive that disconnects itself whenever you glance its way?

[Aklyon]

Not sure if its particularly suited to data recovery, but I've had decent success retrieving people's files with puppy linux in the past, although not from an external hdd specifically.

[MaximumZero]

DamnSmallLinux works pretty well for this too. Gives you lots of room left on a USB boot drive.

[Wirevix]

Alas, 4 hours in puppylinux earlier today resulted in repeat messages of "could not be mounted." 

[alexandertnt]

It sounds like the actual external hard drive controller might be broken (and the hard drive itself may be just fine). I had similar problems myself.

You can try dismantling it and if your on a PC:
  If your external hard drive is a 3.5" hard drive (usually requires an adaptor), then you should be able to plug it directly into your computer.
  If its a laptop 2.5" (usually doesn't require an adaptor), you should still be able to plug it in if its SATA (*DISCLAIMER* I think this is the case, I recommend googling first).

If you are using a laptop:
  You *might* be able to connect it via an external sata connector. I have never used an external sata connector before so I dont know how it works.
  If the external hard drive is 2.5", you can replace your laptops current hard drive with that one and use a boot disk.

[Jimmy]

If this is a particularly old hard drive that's not had servicing or cleaning in awhile it may have overheated. I'd suggest considering sticking it in an airtight container in the freezer overnight as a last resort to see if you can chill the drive down enough to get it working again. I had success myself with this approach.

[Wirevix]

As an update for those who are interested:

We've had some success.  After a few more tries with Linux, we were finally able to convince the drive to mount for a while.  It showed some confusing data at first (claiming there was a lot more stuff on the HD than there really was, so that may confirm my virus suspicion), and was still futzy, but it was at least reading a little.

We tried doing a formatted partition, and after some confusing errors (it refused to format), it started showing the correct amount of data on the drive.  Thus, some hope that maybe it wasn't too far gone!  Still lots of disconnection errors and failures to mount or access, however.

We were pretty sure at that point that part of the problem was damage to the connectors or physical damage of some form, so we tried unboxing the drive to connect it directly into the PC.  Alas, it's ATA while the system is SATA (or the other way around... my partner's been the one handling most of this, as I've been at work for most of these events and just receiving updates, and I forget which.)

Well, we had an old SATA-ATA converter cable lying around, so we tried that.  Aaand... it didn't fit.  After checking the various plugs and bits, we determined that the connector on the drive is a proprietary one, and now we've actually contacted Western Digital for further information and maybe replacement parts.

Reassuringly, the response we got after a thorough description of our exploits was "I have directly forwarded your problems to our support team."  We're waiting for further word now.