Dell 8200 lost HD

I have a Dell 8200 running XP pro. Over past week it had intermittent access/failures to find the hard drive at boot up. Seems that if it sits, like over night, off, it sees it in the morning for a short time, then not (get the press F1 or F2 BIOS message). BIOS does not see the hard drive even when set to Auto

1. I replaced the CMOS battery, no joy.
2. Removed hard drive and put onto USB “drive access cheating device”. Hard drive spins up, but it is not seen by a different PC. Usually it comes up as an external hard drive.
3. Trying freezer method now to see if I can get access.

I have backups (I hope) to an external USB that was suppose to run daily. But I still want to get off as much info as possible from other folders.

What about using something like SpinRite?