PC Wouldnt detect Hard Drive

Ideas on possible causes please? PC normally freezes once a day after being on for 10 minutes, then after a reboot works fine. Today, PC froze, but then wouldnt boot and wouldnt find the hard drive.

Took PC apart, a quick clean, and a couple of bounces on the mattress and all seems well again, but I guess it's a matter of time until it fecks up again.

Likely to be the hard drive? Or Motherboard? Doubt its anytihng else. Thanks.

If it is likely the hard drive, can anyone recommend any back up software to save an image to an external drive?

pop to the hard drives support site, they normally have disk cloning software. also try there diagnostics while your there.

thanks, will have a look

I am using acronis true image to copy drives at the moment. I think you can get a time limited demo of it.
I used to do it with xcopy type xcopy /? in and get a list of switches, you then need to create a few files it won't copy, sure if you look it up on google you will find the list of switches and files you need to make.