I have a Sony desktop, Pentium D, with WindowsXP mce. The hard drives are both SATA. I added a new maxtor hd as drive d last month. I put all my programs on the C drive and all my data and other stuff on my D drive. I did a complete system restore the end of December and everything was ok. Unfortunatly, I had to do another complete system restore yesterday. I backed up all my info onto drive D. Now, the computer doesn't recognize drive D. The maxtor shows up in the BIOS and in the device manager. Also, it shows up in the Disk Management, but doesn't have a drive letter assigned to it. If I right click on it, the only options I get are "delete partition". I don't want to format this disk since all my info is on it. I know the info is still there because the free space is much smaller than the capacity. Don't beat me up for not backing it up on a cd or dvd. I've already slapped myself silly. Anyway, is there anyway for me to assign this drive a letter or somehow access the second hd? Thanks for your help.
jeff

where did you right click on it
did you do this in disc management ,if you did
then I would try a disk utility try to add letter with that.
you can try to force a xp condition by removing power from hdd boot without it then replace and reboot may fix the problem

Thanks for the reply. After 2 grueling days of pulling my hair out and searching the web, I found the answer on the Microsoft site, in the knowledge base. This might help some else with the same problem. I had installed Norton System Works including GoBack when I installed my new D drive. After reading Microsoft Knowledge Base article 330140 titled Hard disk does not appear in My Computer or in Windows Explorer, I found my answer. All I had to do was reinstall GoBack and my disk appeared! In the article, they call it Roxio GoBack. It's now Norton GoBack. Hope this helps someone in the future.
jeff