partition magic is reporting multiple 'bad file record signature' and 'lost clusters' errors on my 250GB samsung sata disk (connected via usb on a xp sp3). Unfortunately PM is unable to fix. PM shows the drive as being NTFS, detects used space ok and also drive name. But PM browser (right click on partition, browse...) won't show anything (as if disk was empty)

Windows Explorer is not even picking the drive name and reports 'the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable'

PTDD partition table doctor demo tells me the boot sector is fine, and I can see all disk content on its browser - but crucially cannot copy that content over to a new disk (PTDD browser is pretty arid to say the least)

Also tried - photorec-6.11.3 - it actually started to extract files but wouldn't keep file names or any folder structure (maybe I missed sth on the configuration options) - find and mount - intellectual scan went well, the only partition on the disk was detected, then tried to mount into p: but got this error on windows explorer: 'p:\ is not accesible. The media is write protected'. Find and mount allows you to create an image from partition but I don't have a disk big enough at hand. Does anyone know if this will keep the extracted files/folders structure intact?

I'm starting to think the disk is pretty screwed and my chances to recover this data are slim. Please someone enlighten me with that marvellous piece of software I am missing :-)

Thanks in advance