HDD "failure" of MBR

A few days ago my 160GB Hard Drive "crashed" in the middle of making DVD backups. I knew that something was wrong as during the burn process, in the notification area, those yellow exclamation points were popping up saying that files were missing. Well, the DVD backup of pictures misburnt, and the computer froze. I restarted, only to find the computer stuck in a perpetual loop never even getting to the windows screen. I fired up the bios and the drive was still recognized. I ran the dell "system utility" and it claimed there was a problem with the SMART. (Way out of warranty) I decided to pop in my XP dvd, got into the recovery mode, and checked the disk. It was giving me an error that the MBR was invalid or corrupted. So, without thinking, I did the FixMBR. Probably not a good move as it created (with my acceptance at 1am) a new MBR. Well, that didn't help at all, and now I'm a bit stuck. I've purchased another Hard Drive and installed XP. When I did so, I found a few things: 1. For some reason it installed XP to a 128gb partition on the new 320gb drive. 2. It installed with the drive letter E:, not the normal C. and 3. I received an error about being unable to find windows\temp\1.exe - which is apparently a trojan... I ran several anti-virus/spyware programs, all of which say that the drive is clean. Not sure where this would have come from.

I'm not sure where to go from here, but I would like to attempt to recover the data on my "crashed" drive. I could probably reformat the drive and use it, but want those pictures. So, my questions are:

1. What software out there is good for recovering files off of a HDD that has a bad/non-existent MBR?
2. How do I deal with this 128GB limit?
3. How do I deal with this E: vs. C: problem? This wouldn't be a problem except that I've already noticed that Adobe's Flash Player installer won't install properly (claiming there isn't sufficient space), and there are others that always prompt downloads/installs with a standard c:?
4. If a virus or trojan was the cause of the original problem, how was it transmitted to this new clean drive?

 

Hang on for someone to explain the 128gb limit [how old is your computer and are you installing XP with either service pack 1 or 2].

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My recommendation on saving your data would be to disconnect the old drive before installing XP on the new drive which you would set as master. After XP is installed you can reconnect the old drive as slave and check its status. This would fix the C: E: problem.

Did your new drive come with a utility that has an option to prepare the drive for OS install? If it did this may solve the 128GB problem.

 

Some quick tech specs to clarify: The computer is a Dell E510 - about 2.5 years old, but was outfitted with most of the trappings at the time. It has 2gb of ram and somewhere around a 2.5ghz duo processor (I'm not in front of it at the moment.)As to the operating system: My original XP disc is the first version of XP Professional, pre-service packs. My HDDs are SATA - I have two slots.

Now, I will attempt to respond to your suggestions:

I did disconnect the old drive (HDD#1 = 160gb barracuda =Bad MBR drive) before installing XP on the new drive.... but now that I think about it, I did have my Video Drive (a 1.5tb sata drive dedicated to video storage) attached... that could have caused the C: E: problem I guess, even though that drive is not labeled as a c: drive... I'm honestly not accustomed to the way that drive letters are assigned for the master drives. I'm only familiar with changing drive letters through Manage.

When you say "reconnect the old drive as slave" - what do you mean exactly ? I remember back a ways when there were jumper settings, but is that what you are suggesting? Right now I have the old drive connected to the second SATA slot. Windows, even post-SP2, recognizes that old drive is present, but is calling the drive 128gb (not its true 160), but says that it can't read from the drive and that it needs to be formatted. Funny enough, it labels the old drive as C: - whatever... I just need to know now how to get the information off of that drive. Is there are program for retrieving data in this manner?

I'll worry about repartitioning, reloading XP, and drive letters after I get the data off of the original drive. Priority #1 is to get that data and move it anywhere (5 1/4 diskettes, zip disks, etc...)

Thank you both for your help!