Hard Drive = Thrashed. HELP!

My Hard Drive has stopped working. Just quit. One day Windows just didn't load. Unfortunately my data is trapped, my backu[p drive had issues just a few weeks earlier and I STUPIDLY had not replaced it yet. Dumb. Now my main drive is dead.

Windows says there is a drive read error and wont boot. So I found a thread on the Inter-web that said to try loading a trail version of Linux from a Disc and using that OS to ferry my files to a safe location. But the drive just keeps freezing the entire process up. When Linux tries to load it goes through a bunch of disc checking with a lot of lines that say "drdy err", "media error", "UNC", "Buffer I/O error" and "Logical Block". All this keeps even Xubuntu from loading and eventually leaves me with a blank screen.

The Windows I was running was XP Pro, the Linux I tried was Xubuntu and the hard drive is an 80 GB Western Digital.

I can only assume the main file directory is corrupted or unreadable. Is there any way to get in there and retrieve my IMPORTANT files? And yes, once again, I am definitely a dumb *** for letting this happen.

E

 

Oh boy I feel your pain on that one.. have you tried a repairing Windows XP from the original disc itself?

 

hmmmm ... that might help

Also, if that doesn't press R when prompted to get to the Command Console and type;
fixmbr

fixboot

chkdsk /r

The last command will take a bit, once it's complete, take not of where it says Bad Sectors and post back here, also try booting to Windows again.