winxp sp2 disk MBR corrupt or missing

In working with a crashed win xp sp2 hard drive supplied by a s/w vendor (proprietary code, etc.) I have been through the steps of:
1. cannot boot into recovery console, ERDCommander will not work, Can't boot from Windows boot diskettes.
2. I can see the data under disk doctor, discovered the partition and did copy off the data.
3. Ran Activey Partition recovery against it and can see the partition, did NOT try re-writing or fixing the mbr, can't risk making this issue worse.

Now the s/w vendor tells us that having a copy of the data is not enough.
I need to make a bootable disk with all the data/application on it to continue.

The equip. I would use is:
1. 'master' pc - with the failed h/d and a new h/d will be attached to via usb.

I'm not sure on the next steps to make a Bootable Disk that is an exact image of the failed h/d:
Do I create a partition on the new drive via disk manager
and then just image or copy the failed h/d contents to it?

Is that going to work? -- It seems way to simple.

Anybody else out there ever been through this ugly situation?? Help is really appreciated.
Thank you.