HDD Crashed :(

[WiT8litZ]

Ok so last night my Windows harddrive crashed on me, potentially taking down everything with it. I am going to reinstall on another drive, but now what will my iPhone do once I connect it with the freshly installed Windows/iTunes?

1) Suppose I can recover the backups that iTunes make, will they be useful?
2) If I can't recover them, worst case?
3) Will I be able to tell iTunes to use the data on my iPhone as the main source for syncronisation or will I have to wave bye-bye to my contacts and all that on my phone as it is now?

Meh @ Seagate faildrives

 

[Slip]

If its a seagate drive it might be one of the known issues where it is stuck in BSY mode and you need to update the firmware. Does your BIOS recognise the drive? I managed to recover my seagate, using a nokia C-42 cable modified to connect to the drive and the issueing low level commands to get it unstuck. PM me if you need help.

 

[WiT8litZ]

It is indeed a seagate, I did a scandisk which did not complete due to getting stuck at sector 15850 or something on the 4th test and just clicking away. Thereafter it just went downhill