Harddrive

okay, i was away from my comp and when i come back my comp rebooted by itself but now it does not detect any of my hard drives! (master is not detected, slave comes up with garbage)

they were working fine before i left, they never made any funny noises (grinding, clicking, etc) the whole time i've had them.

does anyone know what happened to my drives?

could it be the ide cables are faulty?

any hope of getting the data off the drives?

Hm. You mean the slave is named "MAXTo3q38017313" instead of "MAXTOR-150GB" or something? Normally that happens when both drives are set to the same slot,  both as master or both as slave. I have no explanation as to why, but check the jumpers.