Possible dead HDD

I have a WD Caviar SE 80GB some 3 years old. I was having problems dual booting XP x86 and XP x64 and decided to pull the power plug and just used my SATA. I just hooked it back up and upon booting, the stepper motor went nuts, it searched every three seconds and got progressively louder each time. Oh, I did switch in a new ribbon and the searching stopped. I also had the drive hooked up to the middle connector and tried with no jumper, CS and MS. When I booted with the WD diagnostic, it said that there was no drive. Thanks for any help.

ASUS A8N-E
Venice 3000+
1GB RAM
WD 160GB SATA 2

 

If it's a PATA drive, and you removed and put back the power molex, then there is a good chance you have screwed the drive.

PATA drives aren't hot pluggable. You should only remove the power plug when there is no power.

Regardless, it sounds like the drive has had it.

 

It is a PATA though I never hot plugged but I did leave the ribbon plugged in. I also tried Knoppix as a last ditch effort but it wouldn't recognize it either. At least it's backed up. Thanks.