Ones you hook it up to your IDE or SATA vista should run chkdsk automatically on boot up. If it doesn’t fix the problem there is one other thing you can try. There’s a program called SpinRite it's the best HD recovery software I have ever seen. If you have any I.T. buddies they might have this program in there position, they can make you a SpinRite boot CD. The last time I checked SpinRite was still to expensive for the average user. It’s used mainly by data recovery firms and I.T. professionals.