[johnwill]

I doubt you'll get it running that way. I'd suggest getting a 2.5"-3.5" IDE adapter (less than $10) and temporarily install the drive into a standard machine to salvage files and clean up the disk.

 

[johnwill]

No problem, I'll take new pistols too!

 

[johnwill]

W98 (MS-DOS) will only boot from the first primary partition. I think just removing the drive and reading it in another machine is probably the most likely to be successful.

 

[johnwill]

Actually, your inclination NOT to do ANY more writing on the disk is a good one! At this point, I doubt that any process that involves more modification of the drive contents is a real good idea.

 

[johnwill]

A virus is only dangerous when you allow the code to run. I'd move all the data I could get to a new disk, then do a virus scan on that. It's NOT a good idea to attempt to write to a disk when you know it's failing. Even if the file tables are corrupted and not actually a physical defect, writing just makes a bigger mess.

If you talk to data recover folks, you'll find they don't screw around with the source drive, they copy off an image and tinker with that.