OT: Dead hard drive

[Henrik W Lund]

Greetings list!

Sorry for the OT post, but this is about the only place I know where 
people may have an answer to my problem. See, I have a hard drive that 
refuses to be detected by the BIOS. It was working fine and then one 
day: power down - power up - *poof* the harddrive is gone from the BIOS 
POST.

I've tried exchanging IDE cables, putting it on a different controller, 
even a different PC, but it will not be detected. I can hear it spin up 
all right, so I know it's not its power unit. The disk had shown no 
signs of being about to bail (even though it is a couple of years old). 
There's nothing vital stored on it, although I would like to salvage 
what I can.

Has anyone got any clue as to what may have happened, and how one can go 
about accessing the drive?

Thanks in advance!
-Henrik W Lund