Pre Recovery Sector BU of drive that appears unformatted

Is it possible to do a sector backup (BU) w/ ATIH 11 of an unformatted drive. I was using 2 - 2TB drives to BU each other. Unfortunately while on vacation not sure what happened but they both became inaccessible. One was in a USB enclosure, the other was a Buffalo NAS. I can see the USB one in the BIOS when connected dirrectly to the SATA controller but it shows as unformatted. Before I try any software recovery tools I would like to do a sector BU. Is that possible with ATIH 11, which i have, or any other Acronis or non Acronis product?

I understand that the NAS drive is formatted as XT3 behind the network controller. Supposedly that is a format that is more typical of Linux but I think there may be some work arounds to see it in Win XP, which is what I have on all my machines. Any one with experience with this or anything similar, your knowledge is appreciated.
TIA
ed