wrote:

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.


Without being able to test things I'd say the Maxtor is likely bad.

I presume the DVD burner is on the same IDE channel and when the Maxtor
hangs it prevents the DVD from being seen too.

You could try unplugging the DVD from the IDE channel to see if the Maxtor
will operate by itself to get the data off but that's a long shot.