Quote Originally Posted by mistyb
I read through the manual/man gpart and I think it is way above my level of proficiency. I am afraid to do anything that will harm the hard drive. I would rather pay $500 to get it fixed than destroy it myself for free. ; )
That's your call. I hope however that if you do pay someone it is for real value, more than we have given you here for free. Not for someone less concerned about your data than you who just tells you what switches the gpart command requires to write the MBR back to the disk. By the way, if the gpart options look too complex, the man page for testdisk indicates it could be run with no switches, just type testdisk. I'll say that here so someone else doesn't say it privately and then expect you to pay $500 for it.

Do pay attention to rusty's advice but note that he said loud noises. The normal motor hum and ticking as the heads step is nothing to be paranoid about.