Lets see if anyone has an idea on how to recover from this, because I sure don't.

I went out to pick up a few things for my Father from his office, and in the time it took to do so my computer did a 'random reboot'. What I mean by that is that the PC simply decided to reboot right there and then; I have never predicted one successfully. So I come home to find a black screen staring at me while locked in the "Detecting IDE Drives" part of the boot process. I hit reset and tried again, hoping that it was a freak error, to get the exact same results. So I reset again and hit Delete to try and reach the setup screen. It froze before reaching the "Detecting" message.

I have two drives, my D drive is older and smaller which I use for backups, and my primary is a 120gb Maxtor drive upon which I have all my work, programming and writing. Quite literally everything. Aside from removing the drive itself and mounting it as a slave to another system, is there any way to see if my files are safe? And is this the bios, and not the primary drive?

I usually wouldn't ask, I'm practically A+ certified and have worked on computers for 15 years or so, but this problem has me worried. I have been planning on replacing my system, but I really didn't want to do it this way. :?

Any advice? I have about $700 free with which to make a new system, but I can't make it until after I move in 2 weeks. The data loss is roughly 40gb of personal things and tinkering, plus financial records (as a consultant/contractor) unless I can recover it...