I know there are plenty of  PC boffins on OOF so here we go;

My main 500gb Vista64 Hard drive is bust :'(

Won't boot (i've patched up an old 20gb with XP to get online)

Can't see it in explorer but can in 'disk management'.

Tried to run recovery suite from vista install disk but that can't fix it.

Apparently the partition table is corrupt possibly due to screwed up MBR :-/

lots of websites promising to fix this but just wondered if you OOFers had some advice and hopefully some freeware like "diskpatch" or "iRecover" ?

thanks

Is it allocating a drive letter (I.E. D:/) in disk management? If it is try running fixmbr D: from a dos prompt (assuming D is the allocated drive letter).

already tried 'fixmbr' sorry and said it completed the task but fixed nothing! :-?

Run CHKDSK on it.

Hi, search & try some free disk recovery  program downloads from google..

hope that helps
http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/download/current/oodiskrecovery/index.html

if you can see it in disk management try re assigning the drive letter. it should then show in your my computer.
you can then transfer any files you need to dvd/ your 20gb disk and then format to 500gb disk :y

Plomien wrote on 25. May 2009 at 19:59:

if you can see it in disk management try re assigning the drive letter. it should then show in your my computer. you can then transfer any files you need to dvd/ your 20gb disk and then format to 500gb disk :y

can't rename drive (greyed out option :-/)

interestingly the drive is split into 2 partitions of 811Gb & 259 Gb, strange as i set it up as a single partition of 500Gb !!!!!! :o

will try to google more software but so far all seems to be limited demo's unless you pay for full version :'(

I'll assume you ran CHKDSK as I suggested earlier, so check your PM as that obviously didn't fix it.

I had an MBR failure once, and used 'Getdataback'  sounds ideal in your case.

It runs for an hour or 2, then gives you an explorer window so you can copy off what you need  :y

Does it report any bad sectors when running chkdsk?
Probably you have some bad sectors on the boot section of the disk.
Either that or you got some virus.
The report you get is very strange, I guess you didnt do any compression to your hard drive?

Also  if you can Try reconnecting your 20gb as a main drive, and 500 gb as secondary.