How to recover files from a disk with crc errors

Details:

• Windows 7 32-bit
• 2.5" laptop disk with two partitions (A & B).
• When mounted via USB, files on partition B can be accessed fine.
• Partition A was working intermittently, but is no longer readable via any Windows tool I've tried.
• CRC error pops up with I try to access the partition, and Windows prompts me to format it.

I've tried using various file recovery programs – but all the tools either fail to read partition A when I try to recover files from it, or they don't pick up the partition at all.

Is there some way I can do file recovery at the disk level, and not the partition level, to get past this?

Or, is it worth formatting the partition A so that hopefully it's accessible, and then running a search with file recovery software on the empty partition?

Any suggestions appreciated.

(Note: I've look at the other posts and can't find anything that fits my situation. I'm trying to find out if there's anything I can do aside from shipping the disk off to a expensive data recover company – which I can't afford. Thanks).

EDIT: Let me put it another way. Is it possible to take an image of the entire disk, even though some sectors of the disk will throw up CRC errors?

Because the disk seems to be continually degrading (and USB is slow), my thinking is that I can then run some of the 12 hr+ deep recovery routines