Windows 7: Second Hard Drive doesn't show up in BIOS...(again)

hello everyone ^^

i have a problem with my second hard drive. my main/master hdd is a MAXTOR STM380215AS ATA with windows 7 and my second/slave it's a ST3250319AS ATA 250GB (i think T.T) windows XP Professional
My second HDD it's newer then my maxtor(3-4 years) but the Seagate sometimes will not show on bios or anywhere else.this happened several times since i got it..
how i solved the problem till now ?... plunged and unplugged the drive and rebooted several times,,or tried to get it back by forcing the reinstallation of his windows(this worked ) but i cant use that now..i cant get him to show up to move my data( it's very important so i can't delete it) and i know that you can reinstall without deleting the data from a second partition but it's not my case cuz my data is in the windows partition ( it's not my idea lol i had to share the drive with my husband and i got the C: T.T)
anyway are there any other solutions beside to reformat it?
also i switched the cables between the 2 drivers ... didn't work




thank you for reading .

Tsuki.

Hello Tsuki have you tried looking in DISKPART to see if the drive is actually listed?

Click on the Strat button type in cmd > right click on that .exe at the top > run as admin> it will open with a black window let it settle for a few seconds then type DISKPART
then type LIST DISK hit enter and it should show you a list of the drives you have in the machine.

How much data do you have on the slave drive? and is it important?

hi ICit2lol ^^ thank you for your reply.
if you mean in the Manage at the disk listing, yes i looked but it's not there..
before going to bed last night(more like at 5am) after i made this post) i switched their cables and made my slave ,master ,at the second boot he appeared in bios and opened my windows 7(i was happy to tears ) all 5 partitions were there ..
i got a window that told me that the 2 hard drives were successful installed and asked a reboot T.T...did that and again the ST3250319AS ATA wasn't there (bios,manager )
this morning tried again to reboot it till it showed but tho in bios was, when started windows 7 on maxtor,the partitions didn't showed .same in manager ..
also i didn't say but we kind of know when this will happen .. every time ,i will get the "a hard drive is preventing windows from starting " then i get the repair window ( and windows somehow kicks ST3250319AS ATA out)
and yes the files are important (not pictures or anything stupid , documents that i didn't save anywhere else T.T.

P.S aa i did that DISKPART but didn't managed to get anything , maybe i didn't added correct the words

Sounds like the HDD is getting ready to fail...
DLoad and run the Free diagnostics from the HDD manuf. site...run the long test...
If this does not show errors run chkdsk /r from a command prompt.
Either way i'd start backing up my data if you haven't done so already...

Well try the DISKPART again but make sure you type it exactly the command prompt does not tolerate any mispelt words my friend.

Go in and type cmd on the line right click run as administrator it will flick in in a few seconds to C:Windows\system32>
type in there diskpart (upper or lower case)

see shot of mine

Now if the drive is failing as patio says and it could well be try the Seatools to test the thing if it will run on that drive.
SeaTools | Seagate

If the drive eventually shows up you can do a surface (physical) test on it with the Partition Wizard
Partition Manager Server, server partition manager and partition magic server for Windows Server 2000/2003/2008. Server Partition software for Windows Server and None-Server partitions < get the freeware version - great tool