HDD Fails To Boot, But is detected.

[Pennick]

When I woke up this morning I was greeted by "Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device..."

So I rebooted hoping it would go away, no such luck. I tried a boot disk, and recovery console, both said the drive was unreadable. Then I tried an XP reinstall, which told me it couldn't access the drive. Is the drive dead or is it still alive, no clicks or noises from it.
XP Pro
2.8ghz intel
Asus mb
WD HDD 160gb.

 

[Liquidlen]

Welcome to Techspot!

Did you check to see if the drive is detected properly by your Bios/Setup?
Check and make sure the bios settings match the Drive's. Cylinders ,size etc. Sometimes it is better to manually input the drive info in bios instead of Auto detect, just make sure you have the correct input information. Usually written on the label of the drive.
Then try booting to the XP cd or Dos bootdisk and delete>create new Partitions >Format.
If this does not work , you may have a bad drive and a new one is in order.