SRS -

HP may or may not have updates for all the stuff in your machine. OEM makers like HP sometimes post major updates, but they install a lot of components made by others, and you may have to visit the component manufacturers site(s) for firmware updates. With WinXP SR2, I'm pretty sure HP sent you to Microsoft for the update. CD and DVD drives, readers and burners, usually require contacting the mfr.

A main issue in the above is that things that are NOT IN THE COMPUTER still may have software/firmware that may need updating to fix security issues, and HP is unlikely to have info on things like routers, hubs, etc. that you use with your machine.

On the hard drive issue, it's impossible and largely useless to guess without hands-on with the computer and/or knowing a lot of things about it. The machine's OS makes a lot of difference. The format and partitioning of the disk is critical information, and even the manufacturer's name and model number for the drive likely could affect any diagnosis. Most makers of external drives have diagnostic utilities on their web sites, and I'd recommend contacting the maker of the drive involved directly, and putting it in their hands.

Any available test programs will usually be found at their "support" pages.

If the machine crash was caused by an error in the drive, the OS may have tried to "fix" the drive at reboot. Many current and recent Windows Operating Systems can read disks larger than they can format, and an attempt to "fix" could fail, since it would attempt to restore boot sector and FAT within the parameters of what it can format.

TweakUI can hide partitions, and has been known to become corrupted so that individual partitions become inaccessible (can't be easily unhidden).

Win2K in particular has had a bug that would sometimes prevent an external USB device from restarting properly after a hibernation cycle or an abnormal shutdown. The bug was supposedly fixed in SP3, and/or by a prior service patch. Sometimes booting without the drive connected, and connecting after the sytem is up would let PnP re-mount the drive correctly.

With some drives, for some OS, an overlay file is required, and it may have been corrupted.

There are software utilities that claim to be able to recover info from "external storage devices" even in cases where format is corrupted or lost. I don't know of a free one. These are most useful for smaller things like flash cards (camera memories and such) and running one on a 120 GB device likely would take tens of hours. (And you might have to have someplace else to put stuff as it's recovered.) I'd recommend looking pretty thoroughly elsewhere before attempting one of these.

Go to the guys who made the drive FIRST on this one.

John