dude, i had that happen to me before, and it sucks. but you wont believe how i recovered from the...erm...incidend we shall call it? customers pc, same problem.
solution: buy new hard drive, same model, etc...get a clone hard drive
and unbolt the bottom circut part of the new one and put it on the old one, and voila! fixed.
well i just bought a nother hdd...and i dont get what you mean?
all i wanna do is get the data out of that hdd and then give it to newegg for an rma.
im back to xp on this new hdd and loving it.
if i do what you said which i dont really get, can i still go back and use the new hdd?