Help with NTFS hard-drive recovery..

My hard-drive is screwed up. Everytime I click it it says it needs to be formated. I tried Some data recovery programs and some did work, but unfotunately they all are demos and won't let me get the files without buying. Which leads to my question: Anyone know of any free NTFS hard-drive recovery utilities? I know its a long shot, but i had to ask.

First, how did everything occured?
How have you lost all your files? Maybe you can only fix the MBR and everything will be fine?

After a quick search, I came up with this: http://www.salvagentfs.com/1.0.html. I've never used that myself - I've so far been using warez GetDataBack NTFS :)