A friend of mine had a very very sick hard disk. In the end, this is what he had to say:
"I actually got my data back using GetDataBack for FAT from
www.runtime.org. It cost £42 to buy. The free demo version scans the disk, shows what it has
found, and lets you see the contents of the files but not save them to a
good disk. So at that point you know whether it is worth spending the money."
Worth keeping in the back of your mind...