Interesting HDD Problem

[SpYdEr2723]

Ok I have a Maxtor 40 gig hard drive it has been running good for the past year. Well I just upgraded over christmas and it has been working really good, untill a week ago I wake up and turn my computer and doesn't detect my hard drive. Well I reboot a couple of times and then it is there and it works for days at a time working great I leave it on at night, but some times if I have to reboot it won't work again for a couple of times then it will come back. So do you think that the drive died, or is it cables or something?
Current Config:
MSI K7T266a Pro2
AMD XP 1700+
512 Crucial PC2100
Maxtor 5T040H4
Any other info just ask
SpYdEr

 

[SpYdEr2723]

up

 

[novice]

Could be your drive is starting to go. Check all your connections and make sure nothing is loose. Back up any files you can't afford to lose. Run scandisk and defrag. Then run Maxtor's diagnostic off their floppy disk to test the drive. (If you don't have one, I am sure it can be downloaded off maxtor's web site.) See what the results are. If it indicates your drive has problems, RMA and get a new drive from maxtor under warranty. Nobody is 100% perfect, even maxtor drives go bad occassionally. You might also try a new IDE cable, to see if that helps. I once had a power supply fan fail and the system got like to 70 degrees centigrade and had all kinds of corrupted files on the hard drive. I thought the drive was toast as it had all kinds of problems getting through a format and then reinstalling windows. As a last resort, I tried a new IDE cable and it has worked fine ever since (several years!)
Chuck