Have you ever tried to test every sector from 0 to 44849 to find out, which sectors are readable? GD-ROM format is badly documented even in the official SEGA docs. I have "GD-ROM Format Basic Specifications Ver. 2.14 " and "GD-ROM Format Specification Details Ver. 1.32" and they don't even mention the lead-in area for the security zone, the doc says sectors 24600...24940 and 38690...39352 are the 'mirror' (unreadable) areas, but that's not correct, the secutity (ring) area has its own lead-in, it goes before the sector 24941, sectors 24825...24940, I think, but can't say for sure where does it exactly start, since it's hard to read the sectors before 24853 on my drives (but 24853 to 24940 are clearly the security area TOC sectors).
The doc mentions the lead-in area for the HD zone, which contains 6675 sectors and goes before the HD zone, so it _should_ be in the sectors 38175...44849, then, but that means it starts in the 2nd unreadable 'mirror' zone, so I don't understand anything
The HD zone starts not at 45000, btw, but at 44850, sectors 44850...44999 contain the 3rd track's pregap.