I have to agree on the "freeze the drive" suggestion. I have had several (mainly WD) drives that had failures that were related to a controller chip on the drive electronics slowly dying. The chip would be extremely hot to the touch. I have put the drive upside down, placed an anti-static bag over the electronics and then put an ice pack over the failing component letting the ice cool it through the bag (keeping any condensation from the ice pack away from the components). Worked well enough for me to get the data off the drives.
In the cases with the WD drives, the platters/heads are fine, it is just the external circuit board (I had been a big fan of WD but have noticed some problems lately - probably best for another discussion). If you can match the board revision, date, and ROM version, you can replace the board and have a fully functioning drive again. I have found replacement boards online and on ebay. I had to do that in one instance in order to get data off of a drive for a physician. The board was almost as much as a new drive but it allowed for the data recovery.
Take care.
