Is there an easier way to recover the situation if ATA3 driver isn't able to use the HD?
Your reaction lacks a bit of systematic investigation.
If you really had a driver problem, simply switching off the computer and holding down both mouse buttons to start without startup-sequence immediately after power on should have solved it. You then had access to the drives and could have disabled ATA3.driver without touching the hardware.
If that was not possible, you had a hardware problem. Probably a lose contact beween that FastATA and another component. You cured this by removing and reseating the hardware. Removing the driver was not necessary in this case.
