SATA hard drive undetected

[MattsterOfPuppets]

Hi

3 years coming up to 4 i built a pc, custom ordering all the parts and with a bit of help of a friend i built it all and have had no problems until now. I'm using a western digital SATA hardrive running on legacy power on my ASUS motherboard.. one day i try to boot up my pc and it tells me to instert boot media so i check my BIOS and my hard drive isnt being picked up and my IDE DVDRW is primary IDE master.. the BIOS settings still enable SATA and will pick up a slave IDE hard drive but luck on my SATA. I've tried changing the cables with no joy ( in fact there are two types of pairs of SATA ports on my motherboard coloured red and black and i couldnt remember which i connected them to originally so i tried 'em all). When connected i believe the disk drive powers up though i cant really feel it spin or such it does heat up though of course i never checked when it was working so this could be the norm.

I'm really not sure what to do about this, i cant afford the £70 or so just to see if it can be fixed and though i might be able to buy a new SATA hard drive im worried i will have the same problem and really be without a paddle. If anyone can spare some time to try and help me I'd really appreciate it as im totally stumped here.

[quaxo]

If the drive isn't showing in the BIOS:

1. The cable is bad.
2. The drive is dead/dying.
3. The motherboard is having problems.

It might be worth hooking the drive into another system and seeing if it works. That'd be the first thing to do I think.

[MattsterOfPuppets]

Thanks for the reply, i think i can rule out the cable at any rate.. and my motherboard will pick up an IDE but i dont have a different SATA drive to test on my pc or a different pc to test my SATA drive on im afraid so not sure what i can do about that.