Bad MBR - want to repair, SATA drive

Gwen Morse wrote:

I have a SATA drive with a bad MBR,

How do you know that ?

and data on it that I'd very much like to recover.

Windows Recovery will not run -- I need the SATA/RAID drivers in
order to get it to read the disk. They do not come on a normal XP
disk. I've tried slipstreaming them into a new XP disk. The slipstream
disk boots and shows the install process, and shows that it's loading
the correct drivers during the text mode. However, it still doesn't see
any sata drives connected when I choose "R" for recovery.

Then you likely havent used the correct sata drivers when you slipstreamed.

And you can use the F4 when booting the CD to load the drivers from the floppy drive.

I have a laptop with an external drive connector with an adaptor
for SATA. So, I can plug the SATA drive into my laptop. I think
the USB drivers interface with the SATA and it works that way.
The laptop has Windows XP pro on it.

Is it possible to run some sort of utility or repair program that can
"fix" the MBR of my SATA drive, via an active session of Windows
(rather than using the repair disk, which is a sort of mini-version of
the OS that is missing those key drivers)???

Yes, it runs PE which is a subset of XP.

There are a number of MBR repair utes out there,
some of which may well work in that situation.

I like Acronis Disk Director Suite myself.

Alternatively, is there some way to clone the SATA drive
onto an IDE drive, with some software that recognizes
SATA _at least_ enough to go through the clone process?

Yes, Acronis True Image can do that after
booting what it calles the rescue CD.

I'd confirm that it really is a damaged MBR before assuming that tho.

What makes you decide its a bad MBR ?