30GB Maxtor..bios detects the drive but volume doesnt exist even when I run ERD commander...in short whatever I do, master, slave, single, multi, after bios its not detected anywhere, dos, xp, 2k etc..after initial start...I get the message saying hard drive fail.

ps: This HD is tried on two other systems but no luck.

The first thing I try is to boot to a dos prompt and run fdisk. If there is some other o/s on the hard drive it will show as unknown, and you can then delete the partition and create a new partition as you desire.

If nothing is shown by fdisk, then you probably have a scrap disk
Good luck

There should be a way if all cylinders etc are getting detected by bios. It seems mbr is corrupted but I can't take any chance to lose any data on it. I am surprised that super recovery program like winternals erd commander cant detect it as well...hmm.