Harddrive problem with new PC build

[kazilan]

Hey everybody, I just finished building my comp today, first time ever building one. Everything seems to work okay at first but best as I can tell, the harddrive doesn't post in BIOS. I'm still a newbie as far as technical issues, building this was a big learning experience.

The hdd clicks a few times at startup, so I know it's getting power, and I've checked that the windows OS cd should work. When I try to boot from the CDROM in BIOS I get a "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" error. The cdrom drive does spin when the cd is inserted.

I don't know what to do or check - the cable connecting the hdd to the motherboard is connected, I double-checked that first. It's a Seagate 1TB 5900rpm drive, if that matters, and a gigabyte H67M-D2 motherboard (one of the recalled ones) but I'm not using any of the bad SATA ports.

 

[JLukas]

"disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter"

In my experience, that message means the HDD booted first, but it was found to be blank, giving the error. Is the CDROM set as the 1st priority boot device in BIOS? Is the HDD model number displayed in the BIOS anywhere? Does the BIOS have a SMART check utility built-in? You may want to try a bootable Ubuntu or FreeDOS thumb drive to see if you can detect the HDD from that method.

 

[kazilan]

How does the SMART check utility work? I see that I can enable it, but after it is enabled is it easy to get to and understand the results?

edit - I don't see the HDD in the bios anywhere. I've tried different priorities in the boot order, with no change.