Hard Drive Disappeared

Some wipe software cleans the drives so good that you have to re-mount them to be accessible. You can download Acronis or Paragon:
http://eu.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/?source=eu_google&ad=acronis&s_scid=acronis|947440314&gclid=CKG-qJ-AzJMCFQkQuwodl1s8rw
http://www.paragon-software.com/
Though for this i would go for paragon and use there boot rescue disk of which will re-mount your disk so that you can load on your Windows software. Mind you you can go to the hdd makers web site and download their hdd utility software to bring your hdd back on line.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

http://tinyurl.com/yvq99t

Download the free utility from the Seagate website above, and create a [i]bootable[/i] CD in [i]iso[/i] mode. I had trouble doing this with the Roxio software (Easy Media Creator), so I suggest the following free CD burning utility:

http://cdburnerxp.se/

This resource comes with excellent support instructions on how to create a bootable [i]iso[/i] file CD.

You should be able to format the HD from the installation CD once the HD is recognized. For XP Pro, you should use the NTFS format.

Others with much more knowledge than I will doubtless post further helpful responses. But at least this information will provide a starting point.

Rick/Portland, OR

available to fix this problem.

Boot from your XP CD and press the first R to enter the Recovery Console. At the recovery command prompt type in diskpart /add

This will bring up a Menu with the Drive highlighted. Press C to Create a Partition.
You will now get another screen that will allow you to Create or adjust the size of the Partition. It is displayed in (MB) so remember a Partition of 20Gb is 20000MB. Press C to create the Primary Partition.
The next screen will display the Partition information. Press Esc to exit. Press the Reset button to restart the PC and install the OS.

A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415