hard drive unallocated itself

[space_ace]

My second hard drive has dissapeared from my computer.  When you go to disk management it is there but unallocated, is there anyway of fixing this without a clean install?  I am running XP.

[Raptor]

Check to see if it still recognized in your BIOS.

If not, check cables.

Formatting will not do any good - if the BIOS cannot detect it, neither will Windows.

[merlin_2]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309000

[space ace]

The bios does recognize the hd

[MalikTous]

If you can get to the disk administration tool (I'm asssuming you're in WinXP or 2K/NT) you should be able to locate the physical disk and see what kind of partitions it has on it.

WARNING: If you have data on the disk, DO NOT reformat to access the disk. Use a Knoppix LiveCD or similar tool that will access the existing partition and copy your data over to the first HD or to CDs first.

Then repartition the second HD and format it as NTFS or FAT32 or whatever you want to use...