Thank you SD and DBTL.
SD - Re the cloning idea, I'm not clear how I would be able to clone the drive if it remains unreadable ........ would this be a case for Linux??
DBTL - I don't quite follow what you are suggesting - the drive is registering in Disk Management as Drive 0 and is listed as "Dynamic, Unreadable" there is no capacity indicated but the Properties dialogue box recognises the drive as "Maxtor 6L200MO". I've tried loading the MaxBlast software to sort it out but it isn't compatible.
One avenue I'm considering is to buy another SATA drive and install XP on that and just run the two SATA drives with the IDEs disconnected - sort of combination of Richard's and SD's suggestions. I don't know enough about the peculiarities of these drives to judge if this would be feasible. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I lost the files on the present SATA but it would be nice to recover them.
Resolution - in future, burn copies of ALL piccies to CD , soonest!!!
