Hard Drive access probs - pls help :)

[oldcynic]

First - My Specs:
Biostar M7NCDpro mobo, Athlon xp processor (1gb)
1.5gb ram
Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT gfx card
Win XPhome sp2
MAXTOR 120GB Hdd, 2 equal partitions

until yesterday - also had 300GB seagate HDD (set as slave), partitioned into 5 drives (2x40gb, 2x60gb, 1x100gb)

Following various probs over the last few weeks, backed up essentials to a different computer, reformatted c:/ and reinstalled windows.

Now I cant get it to recognise the seagate HDD - physically installed, checked its recognised in CMOS, but its not showing in windows.

I know windows has probs recognising huge HDD's, but is there any way I can con it into recognising the drive without having to reformat using the seagate diskwizard, and losing the stuff on it? (stuff on it is non-essential but useful)