Hi i have this samsung 40GB HDD on widows xp, which suddenly started giving "invalid boot device error". I ran the fdisk utility and after deleting all the partitions created 1 primary and 1 extended dos (having 1 logical drive) partitions. Now when i tried to format the primary partition the system seems to stuck and after a few minuets its starts "allocation table recovery" procedure by giving the message "trying to recover allocation unit 22,202". The recovery number starts from 22,000 and keeps on increasing but no final result is achieved.

any suggestion what can be done to get ma drive back working again ????

Nothing you can do except trying to zero fill it . If problem persist, either replace it or ask a pro to refurbish it - if possible.

Does a 40Gb hdd worth the trouble?!?

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If you can't afford a new drive, sometimes yes. And most of the times it is possible to fix them perfectly , the environment will be happy.
The problem is that equipment and KH is required if it is not a non-faulty drive where zero filling works.

It makes economic sense only if you're paying slave wages in some third world country. Otherwise it's just an intellectual exercise. That said, a lot of my jobs are things that friends bring me, so they're worth doing from that point of view. One other consideration is that drives of that area were more reliable than the drives of today, so you may want to retain them for that reason. Even so, is there anyone who would pay more than $5 or $10 for such a dinosaur, especially if it had a history of bad sectors? ISTM that moving the G-list to the P-list is like sweeping dust under the carpet.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Complete refurbishing is a totally different thing and especially NOW it's an option.