Disabling ATAPI retry?

I am attempting to copy data off a damaged partition on an
ATAPI hard drive onto a new drive using 'dd
conv=sync,noerror' since my Deskstar recently blew up.

My main problem is the fact that when it hits a bad sector,
the drive goes into retry mode for a sizeable portion of
time before coming back with an error.  This means that as a
rough estimate, it is going to take a month to copy the
partition.

Is there a boot parameter or a runtime command that can tell
the linux IDE driver not to automatically retry on error.

Sorry if this is an FAQ, but I could not find the
information.

Kelley Cook