Erased hard drive

Dell Dimension 4400; XPhome; P4; C: WD1200JB; D: CD-RW; E: ST340016A

I did something really stupid. I overwrote the ST or E: drive with 1's and 0's. This wiped out the drive including the MBR section. This was the original drive that came with the unit. My WD drive is my primary drive. Howvever, it has bad sectors.

Device Manager and BIOS boot recognize my ST drive. My Computer doesn't show the E: drive. But I haven't figured out how to write a MBR or anything else to the drive.

I tried using SeaTools. But the program stops when it tells you that it doesn't work in Windows, but DOS only. I have to turn off the computer and reboot to do anything.

So, what do I need to do to be able to use my ST drive.

Try this free tool if you'd like to recover anything on the drive: http://www.pcinspector.de There's not much of a chance of recovering things this way (since it was overwritten with 1's and 0's) - but it's the only worthwhile free recovery utility that I know of.

Genearlly, the C: drive houses the boot files for the system - so that will need to be fixed also.

Go to Start...Run...and type in "chkdsk c: /f /r" (without the quotes) and press Enter. It should tell you that it will execute on the next reboot.

Then go ahead and reboot - this should check your hard drive and repair any corrupt sectors.

Next, go to Start...Run...and type in "diskmgmt.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter. This will bring you to the Disk Management console - and your drive should be viewable there. Right click on the drive and select "Format". That should let you drive be recognized in My Computer.