MBR bad and Primary Partition Raw

[mattstoc]

I have a 2T SATA drive that has seemed to have lost its MBR and primary partition format. I believe this occurred when, in a fit of frustration, I yanked a iPod shuffle out of the USB port. Regardless of the true root cause, I know want to recover what I can.

How I got here:
1) I came back to my computer to find windows 7 trying to repair/recover. That did not work.
2) I shut down the machine. Unplugged all drives, except for a spare blank that I keep around.
3) Installed window7 on the blank drive
4) Plugged in the problem drive (my main drive)
5) Used Disk Manager to look at the drive
6) Found that the primary partition was RAW
7) Used testdisk to back up my data from the RAW primary partition
8) Attempted to use testdisk to recover the MBR and the NTFS formatting on the primary
9) That has been unsuccessful

Yesterday on this site, I read an good article or Post about the steps to take within windows 7 recovery (using install CD) at the command prompt. However, now I cannot find that article. I meant to bookmark it, but I didn't.

If someone could point me to the article, I would appreciate it. Ideally, that will fix the problem. Alternately, I need another suggestion for an MBR recovery software. I am not a super tech and testdisk has a confusing flow and option set (with few instructions). I am methodiical and do understand the underlying concepts, but I need a little more help than a true techie

Thanks in advance.

 

[mattstoc]

Well, after writing the above post, I got another idea on how to search for the article I read the other day. I found it (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win7-windows-7-mbr,10036.html).

However, I am still open to suggestions on the easiest way to recover my MBR and fix the primary formatting. I really don't relish the idea of reinstalling my whole computer