Computer has gone to shit

Chubbly

So I restarted my computer for some mundane reason, and when I went to boot Windows I got the

"a disk read error occured
CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart."

I've had this error before and I fixed it by rejigging the boot order of my HDD in the BIOS. That didn't work this time, so I consulted the internet and was told to run Windows 7 Startup Repair tool. Ran that, and now I get the

"BOOTMGR is missing" error.

So I once again consult the internet and getting pointed to the bootrec /rebuildbcd solution. This doesn't work, as it shows I have 0 Windows installations. The follow on step says to use bcdedit to remove the BCD store and recreate it. This doesn't work because apparently I don't have bcdedit on this computer.

So then I change from X: to C: and dir it. And lo and behold, there is apparently nothing on the drive. Zero files. However, when I boot my RecoveryCD and check with GParted, it says I've used 3GB, and it doesn't show 2 of the 4 HDD I have. Everything is well and truly fucked. What can I do?

tl;dr "a disk read error" becomes a "BOOTMGR is missing" error, Windows 7 recovery tools says Windows drive is empty but GParted says it's not and fails to show 2 of my 4 HDD.

My system is a dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7. Ubuntu starts fine, Windows 7 does not.

Edit: BIOS finds all 4 HDDs.

PeregrineFalcon

Did your Win7 partition somehow become inactive?

Dman

I don't know jack about windows 7 or partitions...so I'm gonna say get whatever you can off the hard drive, reformat the whole thing and start over. I guess you could run scandisk or similar utilities to try and repair it first.

Nakatomi2010

Run a hard drive diagnostic with something like Hitachi's Drive Fitness test, make sure the drive passes.

Chubbly

I tooled around some more, but it seems the partition has lost all information about the file system. Thanks for the help, but it seems I have no choice but to reinstall. I just wish I knew what caused this. The price I pay for using a RC?