oh and all my files are 'unhidden'....that was one of teh first things I checked when I saved the findings from the recovery scan and all I had was emtpy folders.

Found this:

A fix that worked as suggested by Kelly of
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com, and means that you don't
have to reformat.


Download Bing from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ and
unzip it.


*READ THE MANUAL*, and follow the instructions for
creating either a set-up Floppy or ISO CD.


Make a note of the HDD sequence on your machine so you
know which is the faulty drive (C: = HDD0, etc).


Restart your machine and enter BIOS to ensure that the
first boot device is set to be either Floppy or CD
depending on which media you put the setup files on.


Save and Exit BIOS.


Once machine has restarted the setup screen will load, and
an install Window will open.


Select cancel (if you have a ps2 mouse you can use that to
navigate, if you have a USB mouse you will have to use the
TAB key to navigate).


You will get the Maintenance mode screen.


Select Partition Work button.


It will open a file viewer window and show you the MBR of
HDD0.


Navigate through the HDD's on the left side of the screen
until you have the faulty HDD. Select it.


The damaged MBR(s) will be shown (you mentioned that it
was showing a phantom drive so you will see more than one
in there, select the *top* one and ignore the rest for now.


Select the damaged MBR then select 'View MBR' button.


Select Options and Create MBR (choosing File format the
drive had previously).


Once it has finished Select the 'close' button.


Select Reboot.


Remove Floppy/CD.


Once back at the desktop you will be able to select the
fixed drive and it will show the correct size and file
format. You should also be able to find your files and
folders in there.


As you have Phantom drives (old or fragmented MBR's) you
can repeat the restart process, and at the maintenance
screen simply select and then delete the faulty MBR's if
you wish. Reboot and the Phantoms will be gone.


And a little bit of seperate advice from me, you can
prevent Power outages and sudden shutdowns from
destroying/messing up your Boot sector in the future by
going to My Computer - Right-click a HDD - Select
Properties - Policies - uncheck the Write Cache option.


This means your computer may take an extra second to open
programmes but prevents it from trashing itself and
causing the problems you've experienced.


Hopefully this will help anyone else with the same
problems in the future who do a search in here for '0
Bytes' or 'File System RAW'.


Thanks once more to Kelly for the help and advice on this
problem.


Yours Rob Wilson

Greetings,


I suppose you can try using really powerful data recovery tool to restore files. IMHO Active@ Undelete or Uneraser (for DOS) are the best choice. These are really powerful and reliable utilities, they never failed me before or ever corrupted restored info.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

http://www.uneraser.com/