[Samm]

is the drive still recognised in the bios?

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Still??? It never has

[I love my vans]

Still??? It never has

[Samm]

OK, sounds like this drive is being somewhat sporadic then if XP can't always see it either.

Its possible that as this is an older drive, it may need a bit longer to get itself ready when the system is first powered on. If the bios tries to detect the drive before its ready, the detection can fail & it will assume there is no drive attached.
Can you boot system up as you have been doing, if XP can't detect the drive's presence, then perform a warm boot (ctlr+alt+del) to reset the system. See if XP recognises the drive this time.
If XP does recognise it (first or second time), perform another warm boot & press DEL (or whatever key is needed) to enter bios.

This time run the auto-detection utility I was on about earlier :
Depending on your particular bios, the very first screen will either be a menu page or it will be a page with settings (eg date, drives etc) listed.

If you see the menu page, look for an option called 'autodetect drives' or similar & run it.
If you have the other type, look at the drive listing on that page (hopefully) & see if the drive is present. If not, for each entry (4 in total) make sure the drive type is set to auto.

If none of this makes any sense when you get into the bios, then on the very first screen you see there will be a name (eg pheonix, award, ami etc). Just let me know what the name is.