Windows 7: failing hdd or corrupt boot partion

I've got a hdd with Windows 7 installed that recently wouldn't boot past the startup screen. The drive is showing up in BIOS and I was able to connect the suspect drive to another pc and back up my important data.
Now I'm in the process of getting it to boot into windows again but none of the recovery options are working.

Here's what I did: the drive appears fine when plugged into another pc
Booted into recovery and ran the Startup Repair several times, each time I'm presented with the same message: "Windows cannot repair this computer automatically". In the Diagnosis & Repair details it doesnt list any errors codes till the bottom which then says: "Boot Manager Missing or Corrupt" Error Code =0x2

Then I tried to run Bootrec.exe but when I typed in bootrec /fixmbr and bootrec /fixboot I got a "The request could not be preformed because of an I/O device error".
This message appeared during both bootrec attempts.



At this point I'm not sure what else to do. Any advice would be appreciated.
What baffles me is the drive appears fine when plugged into another PC.

Try this repair tool on your hard drive. You might have a failing hard drive so create a boot disc on another machine and run the tools supplied by the manufacturer of your hard drive. Find them easily here:
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure

it appears my drive is bad. would not pass either long or short test using Seatools for dos. a bunch of bad sectors were detected but the utility is unable to fix it.
Fortunately the drive is still under warranty, so i have a replacement on the way...

what a drag, i hate starting over

Yes but on a positive note you'll have a clean fresh install of Windows 7 which will be lean and mean.