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Ok, you have all given our anonymous member some HOPE.

I have been busy asking around tech shops for advice re my hdd problem. No one seemed to know what my problem was.

WOW!!!

I just read the replies and I am starting to have hope again. I wanted to jump in and join the discussion but I think I should try to do the advices first.

A bit of good news - I bought a new hdd, installed windows xp (because my driver files were in the old hdd and xp already has them) , and "slaved" the busted hdd and guess what? CMOS can already detect my hdd. Does that make it easier? But I still cannot access the drive if I click or scandisk it, though.

I tried a prog (recover it all demo) that I downloaded from download.cnet.com. It was able to see the drive, and presented the following options: scan the physical drive, scan the logical drive, and relink partition. I don't know what each does so I haven't tried it yet. I also downloaded fast-file recovery, media tools pro, zero assumption recovery, maxblast (for quantum hdds), and powermax but again, I dont know anything about MBRs, ROOT, and the like. I can learn, though.

I will continue to read the threads from your post and other related posts. By doing so, maybe I can get a better understanding of what scandisk did to my drive. I will also try to check out some of the advices already posted. Just to address a few:

- I doubt if the problem is physical becase I'd like to think that I was careful enough when I transferred the "guts"
- CMOS and windows xp can now detect the drive
- don't know anything about partition aside from the options in FDISK
- i didn't add any new parts
- I doubt if it's a loose cable because the new and old hdd are on the same cable. I also tried other cables.
- the pins are OK.

Many thanks to you and to those who posted replies. I really appreciate your efforts. Hope to get more advices.

Thanks again,

What do all of you think he sould do/try now??