Image that drive to another one as soon as possible.
then work with the second drive to fix the file system errors,
and recover the data ..Sounds like maybe the partition table ,MBR, or
MFT is corrupt. all of which are possibly recoverable .
But the longer you play with a failing drive , the less the chance of recovery .

I agree. I originally wanted to image it to recover the data.
can I Image the drive to a folder on another drive with the same amount of space free or do I have to use a blank drive?
How can I image the drive if it doesn't show up in windows?

Yes you can create an image in a folder ( if you have 40 gigs free
space )
You can use any of the following , and maybe some others .
Winhex
NtExplorer from Runtime.org
RStudio
MediaToolsPro.

Also there is some Linux stuff you can use which is usually free
Knoppix Live CD . then use DD
Helix Live CD


Windows sees your disk, it just doesn't see the file system on
the disk.. Imaging software doesn't care about file system
to image the drive .. and most can recover the data from the image.

Great, thanks for the help!
I should mention the drive shows up in hardware manager but not in windows explorer unless I asign it a drive letter.
I have stomp and Acronis TrueImageWorkstation if either of those will work.
If they won't work I will get one of the ones you listed.

Acronis is not good for imaging a faulty drive. It only copies the sectors that are marked as used. If the filesystem is damaged, this can be wrong. Better use software that copies ALL sectors.

Best regards,

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

If u can get, sectors, try to image it or clone it , wich kind of error did u get while scanning with MHDD IDNF, UNC, ABRT?

Maybe its SA Problem or a weak head,

Best Regards

I haven't tried today but am going to freeze it for an hour since that worked before.

MHDD didn't do anything when I tried Friday. Well I did get a blue windows saying START LBA and then it did nothing.

all the information is in the bios so it is reading the SA, but the smart module of the SA isn't working so SMART was turned off in the Bios.

I am considering purchasing one of these programs. GetDataBack, DiskRecovery Tech Edition, R-Studio Network Edition, WinHex.

which program would be best to image it or clone it?