Didn't try the Linux trick. Oh well.
My conclusion is I was not fully aware of the situation concerning "48 bit LBA" and these larger drives (this one's a WD1600JB, 160 GB cap.).
My understanding was that as long as Windows 2000 was patched to SP4 it wasn't an issue. Not!

Thanks to some fellow Dutchmen who produce some fine data recovery tools (http://www.diydatarecovery.nl), I was enlightened to this website, http://www.48bitlba.com wherein they (as well as a MS KB article) make clear that in addition to patching, a registry setting ALSO needs to be applied.

So the good news is the drive is perfectly healthy, the bad news is the data's gone for good.

C.