Triple boot issue after HDD failure

[LNDCalling]

Hi all,

I wonder if any of you fine people can help. I have been happily running triple boot with Win 7 / Vista ultimate / Ubuntu on my first (somewhat old) build.

Everything was fine until yesterday when I came to my computer to see no IDE HDD detected, it has become apparent that my 150gig WD Raptor X (Crystal) has failed, I can see the head not parking and I can see the 'click' as the head searches hopelessly

I have temporarily Re-Installed Win 7 (Previously installed on the dead Raptor) on to a new HDD, however I can no longer boot to Vista Ultimate or Ubuntu which are installed on a separate HDD. I can access the drive but not sure if Grub was on the failed drive or the best way to restore boots to the other OS's?

I am currently assuming the primary boot partition and Grub were on the lost drive however I did get a 'restore Grub' message even though the drive is completely dead?? Note, neither the Vista or Win 7 recovery CD's could see a Vista installation.

Having already lost one install I want to try and retain the other two especially as they on a fully, otherwise functioning HDD!..

Any thoughts or possible solutions would be most appreciated..

[Vitel]

First thing you can try is restoring grub. The hdd not detected error only appears if there is a hardware failure. Before doing any modification go in bios and see that you can see the drive or not. Check the cables and all stuff and see that the hard is vibrating by touching it. Change the power cable if possible. If the hard drive is shown in the bios then it can be due to some issue. Commonly hard drive fails due to head crash. You can use bootable hdd diagnostic utility to check the health of your drive.