5th August 2003, 1:35 PM
The answer then is this. Hook up the hard drive as a slave on another machine with a main drive that has enough space to store whatever you want to save. Copy over whatever isn't corrupted to that machine's c drive in a nice folder. Format that drive. Copy everything back. Note that if you are using XP you will need to reinstall it, but from what you say it seems you would have to do that anyway. In any case, this should allow you to save what you need from the drive.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)