Help Broken HDD

[Pakonater]

I have an old 60gb IDE seagate HDD. I am using old parts to build a system for my randparents. Sometimes the HDD shows up and windows xp boots othertimes the bios says there is no drive at all. How can I fix this o do i have to look on ebay for an old IDE HDD?

 

[RaDiKaL_]

the IDE cable might not be doing good connection anymore, hence sometimes it gets detected sometimes not, start diagnosing by replacing that IDE cable.

Also when you get that HDD recognized, check it's SMART status with AIDA64 or something similar to see if there's any issue with it.

 

[Pakonater]

I have used 7 different IDE cabes not i stuggle to get it to show up at all