HDDs still unaccessible! Argh!

After almost three weeks, I finally got my desktop running. However, I still cannot access my old harddisks (I've tried changing cables, different SATA/IDE channels, but they still don't show up in My Computer, sigh.), and am still looking for someone else with a desktop to see what can be done.

In the worst case scenario, I probably lost a good portion of my electronic copies of work, lectures, assignments from both my undergraduate and postgraduate work (argh!), some of my current research work of which I should have some copies elsewhere; a couple of hundred mp3s (no big deal really); and over six months worth of pictures, including those of Spain, Hungary and France, as well as those from a couple of special occasions and all that.

Damn it!