reading from devices in RAW mode

[Folkert van Heusden]

Maybe I should've sticked to google (altough it wasn't to helpfull this
time) but
in this mailinglist there are a lot of knowledgeable people, so here's my
question:
for my data-recovery tool I like to read sectors from devices in RAW mode.
found how to do that for cd-rom, but ide/scsi/floppy still leave me
clueless.
Anyone out there who can tell me how to do all of this? (or give me hints on
where to find information that google hides from me)