Please help - can't see spare HD

[muppet]

I saved about 2Gb worth of files so I could reinstall OS and decided to put XP on. When I connected the HD the BIOS recognises it but in Windows I cannot see it. If I go into Disk Management I can see it as Disk1, Basic, Online, Unallocated. For some reason it will not allocate it.
At first I thought it could be NTFS not recognising the FAT32 partition but tried the HD in a W98 PC and it does not see it.
I then went to FDISK and that says it has no partition atall.

I can't believe it!!! I haven't done anything to loose a partition.

Has anyone got any ideas please???
Most of the data is my Dad's aswell

 

[MrTux]

Sounds like the partition table may have been damaged at some point....the best thing to do would be to get a program which will try and recover files from the drive for you. You can also do an fdisk/mbr. You shouldn't loose any data when you do that. It just rewrites the partition table.

 

[muppet]

I will give that a go

 

[muppet]

I tried FDisk /mbr but still cannot see HD. It just thinks there is no partition atall.

Don't suppose you know any programs that could help me out??

 

[muppet]

Anyone have any ideas that could help please???
desparate here