lost access to second hard drive after defragging drive

"defragged" <defragged RemoveThis @discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:461F843E-B544-45D7-81DD-8AE423D10F94@microsoft.com...
> I have windows xp home edition. I have 2 hard drives in my computer. I
was
> defragging the secondary one. After it reached 98%, a message popped up
> saying that the files could not be written. I didn't know what to do so I
> exited defrag. After I rebooted, I couldn't access the second hard drive.
I
> get an error saying that device is not ready or not accessible. If I go
to
> the command prompt, the error is 'system cannot find the drive specified'

You probably had a malfunction in the defragging process,
causing the drive to be thrashed. Here are a few sites with
recovery tools - pehaps one of them will be of use:

http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz
http://www.runtime.org/
http://www.runtime.org/ (has a trial version)
www.acronis.com (RecoveryExpert)

In general I avoid using defraggers. The benefits are barely noticeable,
if at all, and there is a real risk of major damage. I have followed some
fierce discussions in various newsgroups about this subject. One
thing became obvious almost immediately: Those who were in favour
of frequent defragging were so purely because of their faith. None of
them had any hard evidence to back up claims of improved
performance. It seems the display of lots of contiguous files appeals
to their sense of tidiness whereas they find the multicoloured stripes
of a fragmented disk offensive. It's what I call the "Piss in the wetsuit
syndrome: It gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices any
difference."