Master file table corrupt!

I've got a toshiba laptop that had Vista on it. It can't boot (it hangs basically) and the recovery console also hangs.

I've put the the drive into a seperate PC and tried to scan the disk with chkdsk but all I get is either 'Cyclic redundancy error' or 'master file table corrupt'. Even running from a boot disk like bartPE cannot read the partition.

Nothing seems to be able to read this drive even from a seperate PC, has anyone got past something like this?

Otherwise I guess I'll have to ditch the drive!

I'd read more up on this before you try it, and I definitely wouldn't mention it to the manufacturer if the drive's still within a warranty repair, but I read an interesting article over the weekend about cooling failing drives down in the fridge (think it was recommended no more than 20 minutes, but check that before you try it) and there were lots of positive comments saying this had given people enough 'up' time to retrieve all their data to an external HDD. Here's the link: Kempa.com

If you can't reformat the drive get it replaced under warranty - sounds dead to me. Check Toshiba's site for warranty details.

Its out of warranty unfortunately. I can replace the drive no problem they're cheap enough anway. I would just like to recover the data (well, the owners data that they haven't backed up of course!) before scrapping it!

Buy a cheap USB drive caddy and see if Recuva can reclaim anythign from it. If it doesn't at least you've got a drive caddy out fo it :)

I'm guessing the drive was NTFS then I'd expect chkdsk c: /f /r (from BartPE or whatever) to get back a good deal of the data (unless there's more than just the master file table gone - if the drive is failing physically then that's possible)

Have you read the SMART data - does that tell you anything useful (I like Speedfan for giving Smart info)

I'm just trying to read it with Paragon rescue now - it seems to be able to read the drive and users folder so fingers crossed it will be able to recover something!

Chkdsk run from anything come back with the 'master file table corrupt' error and then aborts.