Spin rite is a good utility that use to be free. You can probably search and dig it up on the net soemwehre.
No rescue disk is BAADDDDD. If you ever tried to screw with disk partitions before, you know you had to Fdisk and blow the whole thing away to make just about any cahnges. You can then appreciate the power of the partition magic utility and the scope of what it is doing. You then relize the importance of the rescue disk, it stors the original FAT File Allocation Tabel and MBR. Relitively small files, BUT, very important. The MBR can be lifted from a similar PC. BUt, the FAT tabel is specifc to the data thats on the disk. It is the Tabel of contents so to speak for the disk and tells the physical locations of files on the disk. Replacing it with another one from even an Identical disk with an identical config is no good.
Try spin rite if you can snag it, I wont mention the disk thing again ;)
Hey if your copy of PM is ligit, give power Quest support a call, they are good and can recover crashed disks pretty well,,,,,,, hmmmmm wonder why :) .
Anyway, they have told me in the past that the A # 1 way people screw up is becasue they dont see activity and think its hung,,,,, but its not! The process takes exponetaly longer when there is alot of data on the drive, you dont here or see much disk activity either. It makes me so nervous, I have to leave the room and come back in 2 hours or Ill go nuts and get itchy reboot fingers :) .