hard drive not recognised
 

Hi
I have a PC running under Windows XP Pro, with two hard drives: one
Hitachi Deskstar 120GB split into two partitions (one with softwares
and system files, one with word, jpeg files etc.) and one Maxtor 13GB
(an old one) I use as archive.
Yesterday I wanted to save a Word document on the Maxtor and Windows
displayed a window saying that it cannot find the drive. I checked in
in "my computer" and indeed it was not there.
So I restarted the computer and I saw that the BIOS didn't recognise
the drive (it did not recoignise my DVD burner either...).
Next time it recognised both the hard drive and the DVD burner but
Windows did not start.
The last time I made a backup was in May 2005 so I'd lose many data...
Anybody have any idea where this problem may come from and what I could
do?
Please help me, it's so important for me!
Vladimir.

hard drive not recognised
 

hard drive not recognised
 

Run Powermax HDD s/w V 4.06 (I think it's the latest) on the Maxtor to
be sure, if it does not find a Maxtor drive it's a good bet it's dead,
sounds like it has died, they all die eventually, just some go faster
than others.

One of my systems on raid was running 2 SATA 80Gb drives, one that was
replaced died within one week from brand new, took em 3 months to
replace it.

It's WD-JB's or Seagates for me now.