Hello,
I had this same issue, and I was able to recover my files off of the 3TB drive I fried. You may need some screwdrivers, and you should download the TestDisk utility from CGSecurity--I tried several different utilities and this is what ended up working.
If your drive is a version that has a detachable plugin, you don't need hand tools. The part of the drive where you plug in the power and data cords should feel "loose" and will come off with a firm yank. You will then see another set of plugs, which are the drive's SATA data and power plugs. If you don't have a detachable base, pull the HDD out of its enclosure.
Install TestDisk onto THE DRIVE THAT YOU WANT TO RECOVER YOUR DATA ONTO. If this backup drive is large, you may not have room on your c:/ drive. As far as I can tell, testdisk has to recover everything into one directory.
Turn off your computer, open the case, and install the "naked" drive using its SATA port. Get someone knowledgeable to help you if you don't feel comfortable with this. Boot up your computer. Check "my computer"; if it isn't there, use Disk Management (Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage) to look for a drive without a letter. Assign a letter in Disk Management if necessary. I was able to see the drive but Windows said it was unformatted. DON'T FORMAT! If you don't get an error, but you can open the drive in Windows Explorer, congratulations on your new HDD. Otherwise, open TestDisk (I also used PC Inspector, Windows Disk Management, and Partition Wizard; they detected wonky partitioning but couldn't recover the data), select the drive, and do a scan. You may see several partitions discovered. Any partition that displays files correctly is "good", for this purpose anyway. You may need to do a "Deep Scan"; I did, and it took about 15 hours.
In a "good" partition, hit a to select all files, then C (this is all included in the TestDisk interface) to copy them. Select the directory to copy/recover to; this directory MUST BE IN THE DRIVE ON WHICH TESTDISK IS INSTALLED--at least, I couldn't get it to change to another drive letter.
There's one big downside to all of this: the initial scan took about 3 hours (expect a "deep scan" up to a day), and another 8 hours to copy the recovered files off the drive (almost 2TB). But I recovered all but three of about 400k files off the drive (admittedly, it doesn't tell me which three...they may have been bad sectors even before the crash).
I don't trust the HDD anymore, so I'm not using it, but if you trust your integrity checker you might just keep on trucking with it as an internal HDD after reformatting.
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