Partioned Hard Drive....gone?

Hi there

Yesterday my pc decided to give me a bit of grief. I loaded up the pc and went to click into My Documents and found the whole computer just free up. I restarted the pc thinking it was just messing me around, intending to do a defrag and virus scan to make sure (Norton 2010 internet security). To my horror, the pc wouldnt move past the Windows XP boot logo, it just sat there with the loading bar moving across the screen as if it was permantnly trying to load.

I reset again hoping to start it in safe mode, however upon doing selecting "Start In Safe Mode" it went through to a black load screen with white writing and populated the screen with loads of text about how it couldnt load specific windows files located on a partitioned part of the hard drive (that I load the OS on).

I have been through the XP recovery process and it seems to have cured the problem with me now being able to access the desktop again, however clicking on my computer only shows the main storage element of the harddrive and not the small partitioned space I use for the Windows XP installation. It must be there as XP loads off it, its just not showing it at all?

Does this riong any bells and is it easliy fixed? Or do i need to do a complete format and start again/buy another HDD?

Thanks!
Mark