Hard Disk Drive FAT Table Bad

I have an OLD (at least 3 Years) Compaq LTE Elite notebook computer. It used to run Windows 95. I got a new computer and put this one in the closet. Now I want to give it to my son so that he can have something to do his work on. Here's the problem with it...

When I took it out of storage, and first turned it on, it ran the POST tests secessfully. Then, after it checked the floppy drive for a bootable disk (and of course nothing was there), the hard drive started to spin. Right then it gives me a "Disk I/O Error." I have tried to reinstall at least DOS 6.0, but DOS says that the hard drive FAT table is bad. When it tries to correct it, I get a "Disk Unusable" message. So, I have since created a DOS floppy disk. It's not that useful, but it's DOS. I have tried downloading a Hard Drive repair tool from the Compaq support site, but it doesn't help.

Is my hard disk ruined? Can it be salvaged?? HELP!!!!

 

closing duplicate, view this post
http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?threadid=60712