HDD suddenly no longer detected, is it toast?

This is basically my first time ever posting in a forum so I apologize if I did anything wrong.

My problem: The other day I came home and my computer was sitting at a black screen that said there was no boot media selected and that i needed to pick one. I went into the BIOS and it wasn't detecting any hard drives at all, I went through everything and nothing seems to be wrong in bios settings, the boot order is set to hard drive only.

I tried unplugging it and switching SATA slots on my motherboard multiple times, as well as switching to a brand new SATA cable, I also switched the plug in coming from the power supply but it still doesnt work.

Possible causes: 1. About 2 weeks ago i put in a new video card, xfx radeon hd 6850 and have been running a 27 and 20 inch monitor with it
2. a couple days after that i installed 64 bit windows 7.
3. Pretty dumb that i didnt notice sooner, but my main chassis fan is not working properly
4. pretty old hdd

The computer ran fine for a week after putting the new windows in, my family says they never touched it so i assume their telling the truth. I have some ideas as to whats wrong, hoping someone could narrow it down for me.
1. new VidCard overheated motherboard somehow, seems unlikely tho cuz everything seems to be working fine except the sata hard drive.
2. hdd overheated??
3. is it possible for the end of the cord that supplys power to the hard drive to come unplugged inside the power supply?
4. with new hardware, power supply was struggling and something failed in it.
5.hdd fried, its about 2 1/2-3yrs old so wouldnt be suprised.
6. delayed compatibility issue with windows 7

many of those are very unlikely, just looking for suggestions as to where the problem is,and what to do, Im using an asus p5q pro motherboard, 8gb corsair ddr2 ram, seagate barracuda 500gb hdd,intel duo 3ghz cpu, coolermaster case. not sure what voltage is on power supply.

also 1 more question, if i buy a new hdd is my windows 7 code used up or will it work again with the new hdd? cause that would really suck if it didnt.

Sorry I typed so much, trying to make it easy, thanks for any suggestions.
 
You should probably find out how many watts your PSU is. Your card has a bit of a draw on it.

If you get a new hard drive you won't have a problem with installing Windows. First time I reinstalled, I just had to call some phone number for an automated activation, second time, didn't even need to do that.

You'll probably do ok with getting a new hard drive, but if you have another one you can use, just to check that its the HD not the mobo, that would be better.

Do you have any heat monitoring software installed? If not, you should install one.
 
Ok thanks. How many watts should I have for my system? I dont know why i wasnt monitoring the temp that was stupid, I knew when I started to upgrade that I may run into a problem.
 
Did you notice any video corruption while playing games, or any kind of problem you hadn't seen before in terms of weird artifacts, etc?

I like Core Temp for measurements. There is also Speed Fan. Also do some searches on the web for your particular products, and get an idea of what kind of temperatures they should be running at idle and at load. This way you can set your alarms and so forth.

You probably want to have at least 500W. You can play around on this site. If you do have to end up getting one, don't get the cheapest one. Get a good brand with favorable reviews, if you sign up for egghead's shell shockers you'll probably find a good one on sale within 2 weeks.

Chances are your hard drive just died. See if you can borrow a drive from someone just to be 100% sure? If the BIOS recognizes this new card, then you can probably just buy a new one.

You also may want to check the drive that you had in your system with another computer, via an enclosure or docking station. If the other computer won't see your drive, then its pretty much certain that your drive fried.

Just keep in mind when troubleshooting to change one thing at a time. Also if you did not clean your case out when you put the new card in, take this time to vacuum it out, clean out all the fans and the fins in your cpu heatsink. You'll probably want to replace whatever fans are not working. Also see if cable management can be improved, tuck some cables out of the way, you can use zip ties or electrical tape.
 
Thanks very much for your help man I really appreciate it.

Thats funny, a couple days before it died my brother was playing world of warcraft on it and said it was running bad and I laughed cause hes not very computer savvy and figured it was just lag or something.
 
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