I bought this new pc back at christmas time. I took my old hard drive and put it in as secondary hard drive.
For about 3 months everything was fine then one day the old 1tb set up as e: stopped being detected.
I spent a day on it checking power cables, sata cable and got it working again.
Then this afternoon it happened again, went and purchased a new sata cable and still no luck getting it recognized.
It sucks as have tons of footage, not to mention all my steam saved games on the drive and out of ideas to get it working.
Maybe try doing an internal-to-external conversion...see if a USB connection might be recognized.
At least, that'd be my last ditch attempt if I wasn't sure that the HDD was simply toast.
Does it show up in your BIOS? If it does then boot a linux live-cd of your choice and copy the files you want. If you're new to Linux use Ubuntu, it's dead easy and will mount your windows partions for you.
I haven't checked this time Vrick, will let you know.
Sledgehammer
Sounds like a failing drive controller. Not much you can do about that unless you can get the drive to be recognized again. At which point the only thing you should do is copy everything off and get rid of it.
Put it in the microwave.
I should put you in the microwave
I bet Katmai tried to eat it. Hint: Computer hardware doesn't work well if you gnaw through the wires.