My rig no longer detects D drive upon boot up. The disk was salvaged from my previous rig which I had to replace due to motherboard issues. It was then reformatted and used as a secondary drive where the majority of my programs were installed.
How do I go about trouble shooting the issue, and what could be the likely cause? I hope it's something as simple as a loose cable.

Forgot to add - running a Win7 Home Ed rig. Thanks.

So try reseating the cable. Alternatively, use a different one if you have it, if not swap the cables for C: and D:. If D: is detected and C: is not, you know it went bad. If it's the same, try a different port on the mobo for the D: cable. Sometimes a port goes bad. If you don't have any, plug D: into C:'s port. Sure you won't be able to boot to the OS, but at least you'll know if the BIOS sees it or not.

In other words, right now the list of variables consists of drive, cable, and port. Do what you can to eliminate cable and port and you'll know it's the drive. If the drive works with a different combination, you know it's not the drive but one of the others.



The Jedi Master

If you do happen to get it going, doing let the computer shut down or go to sleep before you back it up.

Thanks for all the replies. Unfortunately, the drive is indeed dead, deader than a zombie dodo.
I brought it to a repair shop, the guys removed the drive and installed it on his test rig, it wasn't detected either.