Yes the data can be recovered but it is very expensive to do. If I'm not mistaken that system also has a hdd diagnostic which can be accessed during boot by hitting CTRL-D.

If all else fails, download a diagnostic from Maxtor to run on it.

Now unless I've read this all wrong, You have Win 98 on it? But the error message is an NT\2K\XP error...or did you just mean that a Win 98 disk wouldn't see the NTFS?