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[elec_tech]

Just an update (and thanks for all replies btw).  I used a couple of different PC file managers to check out my HD, and everytime I started them, they would recognize my xbox drive and then crash as soon as they tried to load the partitions up, so I reformated the drive in NTFS, and every time I rebooted, my bios screen gave me a warning that the S.M.A.R.T. system detected an imminent failure (that was with a qucik format).  So then I tried a complete, 4 or 5 hour format, and the bios error went away.  I also stuck the drive into another PC after this all, and it hung the PC on startup, so I think I've just got a bad drive that's acting up intermittently right now.

[diskman]

I had the same exact problem happen to me about two weeks ago.  I tried to rewrite the partition table to the drive without formatting in hopes that the only problem was a corrupt partition table.  Ultimately, this failed but I may have given up prematurely.  

To mount and read the xbox drive in my PC, I used xbox-hdm which is a bootable linux CD with a bunch of tools for preparing hard drives.

After rewriting the partition tables using this program, I was able to browse the F drive in my PC (using the xbrowser program).  Everything appeared to be intact.  However, when I removed the drive and reinstalled it in my Xbox, the problem was still there.  I was frustrated at this point and said f-it.  I backed up C and E, then used the evox hdprep cd and just reformatted everything, then restored my C and E drives.  F now works fine, but all data previously on it was lost.

I think I would have at least been able to pull data off of the F partition when I had the drive in my PC, but I never tried.

A link to the xbox_hdm software can be found on this website somewhere (took me a while to find it).