mobo does not recognize harddrive, help!

[Gix]

my abit kr7a-133R does not recognize my brand new wd 80gb 8mb hd. I just reformatted it with NTFS, installed windows on it, was able to restart fine with it twice. then i turned it off, i just turned it back on now, and it says that it doesn't recognize the hd!. i tried taking devices out, switching the IDE slot that the drive uses, taking away all other drives. does this mean my harddrive had a failure? i can still hear it start up when i turn on the computer.

 

[Vinny N]

So you can confirm that the drive sounds like it's getting power and spinning up?

Any odd sounds from it, like unhealthing clunking or grinding? Or does it sound pretty normal to you?

Check your jumpers on the hard drive, is it the only one on the channel? If so, is it set to SINGLE rather than MASTER?

Check your BIOS, have any of the settings changed? Are the IDE devices still set to autodetect?