Question : Problem: 40 GB Hard Drive suddenly only shows a 8.74 partition in BIOS

A friend brought over a Hp Compaq d530C with a 40 GB Maxtor hard drive. His computer had some kind of problem while he was copying files over the network. When the computer restarted, he got non-system disk error. When I looked at the drive in BIOS, it only showed an 8.74GB partition and I haven't actually been able to access that to see what's on it with Windows management console. I don't know if this drive had 2 partitions (1 being a manufacturer recovery partition) or if he just had a problem that suddenly reduced the his partition down to 8.74. I installed a new hard drive and the system works fine, but we can't see this drive at all in Windows My Computer or Disk Management console. No jumpers were changed prior to all of this, except as an attempt to slave it into another system, but the BIOS reads the drive the same whether its alone and primary or slaved. He's trying to save his data on the old drive. Has anyone seen a sudden partition change like this, and is it fixable.

Answer : Problem: 40 GB Hard Drive suddenly only shows a 8.74 partition in BIOS

Sounds like a bad hdd. you could try an IDE to usb adapter but usually if the drive won't work internally then it won't work externally either. Usually when the drive is showing the wrong size it's a problem with the drives electronics. One option would be to put the drive in a sealed bag(sandwich bags work) and out it in the freezer for a couple hours then try to access it(usb adapter is great for this). If that doesn't work another option would be to buy and IDENTICAL drive and swap the PCB. If those fail then the only other option would be to send it to a data recovery center(expensive).