Just a suggestion, have you thought about giving UBCD a try? There's a 
bunch of software tools on it, most of which are way beyond me, but I 
have managed to salvage a couple of hard drives with it in the past.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


On 02/17/2012 04:27 PM, Technomage Hawke wrote:
> you can load a live DVD into the system and then try one of the many HDD test tools (badblocks with no options is a safe bet and will tell you almost immediately if there are any problems). I know there is another command line tool that can test drive throughput and read the SMART tables on the controller. I can't remember its name off hand, but it is a good one to test the drive electronics.
>
> -eric
>
> On Feb 17, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Michael Havens wrote:
>
>> Yep.... I think I had a hard disk failure. I restarted my computer and was presented with:
>>
>>       error: unknown filesystem.
>>       grub rescue>
>>
>> I then typed 'ls' and the response was
>>
>>       (hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos1) (fd0)
>>
>> which is two partitions, the swap drive, and the floppy disk
>> how do I verify my suspicion of drive failure?
>> funny how all this happened just as I was attempting to back it up.
>>
>> -- 
>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
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