No hard disk drive detected, any help appreciated

[Akshat121]

Hey everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Here's my problem. I'm trying to boot up my computer, but when I do, I get this error saying
"NO Hard Disk Drive Detected!
Press F1 to resume"
and when I press F1 it gives me another screen telling me to reboot and select a proper boot device, and then the screen goes black after a second.

So, my first thought was that my hard drive must be shot. But when I tried to swap it with a different drive, it gave me the same message. I tried to unplug the hard drive from my computer and put it in the other one, and it was detected, but still failed to boot completely, although I'm fairly certain that it's an unrelated problem. That drive was always a little quirky.
So then I think, maybe it's the cable. Luckily, I had an extra cable that came with my motherboard, but unfortunately it didn't resolve my problem at all when I switched it with my old cable.

Finally, I checked out my bios to see if it had any hints to a solution, and I saw that my hard drives were listed as "[Not Detected]". And on the screen to change boot order, the only 2 options were the floppy drive and my cd/dvd drive.

I'm starting to think that I may have to replace my motherboard. But before spending money I should probably be saving, I thought I'd do some research online, which is when I stumbled upon these forums. Hopefully you can offer a better alternative.

And if it helps in your diagnosis at all, I assembled my computer myself, and it's been working fine for a while, until now. I have a 40GB samsung hard drive, and an Asus k8v SE motherboard.

Thanks again for reading all of that, and for any suggestions you could give me. =]

 

[soulslayer]

I would assume that it is the motherboard that is the problem here. If it's not the cable and not the drive itself, then unfortunately it probably is the motherboard. Is this drive IDE or SATA? If it is SATA and you can get your hands on an IDE hard drive, try it and see if it detects the IDE drive. If it is an IDE drive, try a SATA drive and post the result.

Try clearing your CMOS as well by using the jumper option (if available with your mainboard). IF NOT, then try removing the battery for a short while with the power unplugged and hit the power on switch to dissipate any retained current.

 

[Akshat121]

Sorry for not mentioning it earlier. It's an IDE drive.
I think it's highly unlikely that I'll get an SATA drive just to experiment with. But if there's a good chance it'll solve my problems then it would be a very nice alternative. Just wondering, if I get an SATA drive, will I still be able to connect the IDE ones and save all my old files? I've never used or even seen an SATA drive before, and I don't really know how they work.

I got a few suggestions from another board. I'll post what I posted there to keep this thread updated.

I tried reloading the defaults in my bios, but I still get the same message.
I've also tried switching the power cable from my cd drive to my hard drive, but that didn't work either. I'm not too computer literate, but by 2 different channels I'm assuming you mean the two ends to the cable that connects the hard drive to the motherboard. My motherboard is fairly new, I bought it in 2006 and the cables that came with it aren't labeled master and slave like on the older computer I'm using to test the parts, so i guess I don't fall into that category.
I tried testing the IDE connector by plugging the cable I was using for my hard drive into my cd burner, and it shows up on the bios just fine. So I guess that means it's not a problem with the connector.

 

[soulslayer]

Basically, a SATA drive uses a different type of cable and port to connect the hard drive to the motherboard. It allows for faster transfer of data. So with a SATA drive, instead of connecting your hard drive using that wide cable to the IDE port on your motherboard, you would be using a thinner cable (SATA cable) to connect your SATA hard drive to a SATA port on your motherboard, but you must have a SATA drive. Check your motherboard manual to see where your SATA ports are on the motherboard. My best guess is that the IDE port on the motherboard is no longer working or possibly the entire motherboard, but I doubt this very much as the BIOS is showing the CD drive. How is the CD drive connected to the motherboard? Is it an IDE connection that goes to the motherboard? If it is using a separate IDE cable to connect to the motherboard, maybe you can slave on the CD drive (using this working IDE port) with the hard drive as the master device or just disconnect the cable from the CD drive and put it on to your hard drive and see what happens then. If your motherboard has more than one IDE connector on it, try putting the hard drive on that one, etc. Maybe it is just one of your IDE ports gone bad.