busted Partition Table - How to Fix?

[Greg Strockbine <gstrock@pacbell.net>]

Is there any way to fix a busted partition table?

I have Linux installed on the primary master drive, /dev/hda.
I have a seconday IDE drive,  /dev/hdc, a 40 gig Maxtor, containing
data.
The partitions on /dev/hdc are in FAT32 format.  There is
also some raw space on the drive.

I thought I would do some partiton creation and resizing on
/dev/hdc using partition magic, but it complained that the
partition table was busted, something about start and end.

I tried GNU parted and it gave me this when I did a "print" cmd:
Error: Invalid partition table on /dev/hdc - wrong signature 1

How do I fix this?

What surprises me is that I am able to mount all the partitions
on /dev/hdc and access all the files there.

- greg strockbine