Hard Drive Boot Error

Reseat the power and ribbon cables to the drive. If HDD regen doesn't find a problem then its likely there isn't a physical problem(though it doesn't completely rule out the possibility)
I'd suggest using recovery console if using XP or 2K and use FIXBOOT and FIXMBR

The FIXBOOT command writes a new boot sector onto the system partition. The syntax for the command is:

FIXBOOT [drive:]

It is important to note that if you don't specify the drive: option, FIXBOOT writes the boot sector to the default boot partition. You can specify a different drive if you need to write a boot sector to a
volume other than the default boot partition.

The FIXMBR command lets you repair a master boot record (MBR). The syntax for this command is:

FIXMBR [DeviceName]

If you omit the DeviceName parameter, FIXMBR rewrites the MBR on the boot device. You can specify a device name to write a MBR to a different drive (such as a floppy disk or secondary hard disk). You can use the MAP command to retrieve a list of device names. An example of a valid device name is \Device\HardDisk0.

Click to expand...

Another possibility is that you have a corrupted Windows install, sometimes this can cause a boot error like that. Bootsector viruses can also cause this(a bootsector virus is quite rare these days)

That error message typically means the drive is not recognizable or there is no formatted partition.

If you are missing a boot sector but your drive still has data on it, typically it will give you an "OS Not Found" error or something a little softer than "DISK FAILURE!!!!!!!!".

Now, if you took this drive and put it in another computer as a slave drive, it would probably show up as unreadable since it sounds ilke there is no file system structure.

I am thinking that fixmbr might make a difference for you. Fixboot will not solve your problem though.. At least not until you can get your missing partition solved. See Storm's suggestion above this one.

If you can run HDD Regenerator on it, then that means your drive is reading/writing okay and you should be able to get your data off. I would recommend Active@Partition Recovery to attempt to restore your partition information. They have a trial version that will show you the files on your drive (if it IS possible to recover it). You can't actually restore them unless you buy the program... But it is fairly cheap and is probably worth your time and loss of data.

This is much better than most programs which attempt to scan file by file. The success rate of fixing the partition vs restore files individually is much higher and much easier.

And all of this assumes that your drive is still good. If it is making noise though, that usually isn't the case.

Good luck.