The disk ( a WD raptor sata 74 gb) fail to boot after a strange system lock.
Using thunderbird and opening a note, the screen went almost blank and system froze. After that no boot capability any more.

Inserted the failing disk as secondary drive on another system.
This system has its own primary sata drive, working all rigt with WIN XP.
Went to my computer  manage  disk management, and it said that Drive 1 is fine (they showed the right size and usage) but drive 2 (the problem drive) wasn't active. I set it to active. And the message is that the disk is unformatted and unallocated.

For all I read on this fantastic forum plus others p[laces, the MBR record could be damaged.

The disk was formatted as 4 partitions NTFS (20 + 20 + 20 + rest of disk), being the first partition the active boot unit.
Is there a simple way to read the information actually on the MBR record and see were the problem could be.?? Or any better suggestion>???

Thanks in advance

Juan