BADMBR Notice from Norton Partiton Magic 8.0

I Think I should put this here since it's a prob with my HDD. I PM'd browniz about my External HDD that stopped working and he told me to try recovery software and if that didn't work to open it up and put it in my PC as a slave drive. I have it hooked up now, but when I hooked it up no recovery software, or anything would let me get my files off of it ><. I formated with Norton Partiton Magic 8.0 and it said it was fixed. When I tried to access it through windows via My Computer it said the drive needed to be formatted -_- so being the dip-stick that I am I clicked ok and formatted... now Norton PM 8 says its a 30-some Gig HDD that is BAD and when I try to re-partiton/format in Norton PM8 it says it's a BADMBR drive. I looked that up and learned that it meant that the drive lost its Master Boot Record...unfortunatly I can't find a way to fix it So now I'm on the rampage trying to figure out why everything I've done with my computers seems to bite me in the @$$ /cry all I want is for SOMETHING to go right @_@. btw anyone who read my first post on getting the parts for my new PC...that went bad to >_> had to buy another $500+ in supplies on top of the $900 I'd already spent ;.; can anyone please help me.... I think I'm gonna start having computer shops put my crap together when I buy it from now on.... or buy every comp. manual in existence and read everything before I do anything more difficult than installing a Floppy Drive >_>. /sigh oh well... sorry for the rant. any and all help will be much appreciated.

P.S. the HDD that I'm working on is a 160 GB HDD and my comp says its only 30GB...thats...bad right?

Thank You,
X Ninaki