boot disk failure?

[mindbullets]

my dads pc keeps failing to boot up on a regular basis he gets the message 'boot disk failure 'it seems as if the computer cant see the hard drive ,it will usually start if he disconnects then reconnects the ide cable on the back of the hd ,he has replaced the ide cable and still the problem occurs .so should he replace the hard drive or could the problem lie elsewhere.any advice much appreciated.

[Phantaxus]

Im wondering if this could be disk latency. What might be happening is the hard disk is taking its time to spin up to speed and the computer is saying ah no hard drive. If you soft reset the pc will it start up ok the second time round or do you have to do the ide cable thing every time? if it is disk latency there is usually an option in the bios you can adjust to make it wait a bit longer.

[mindbullets]

thanks phantaxus i'll get him to have a look at his bios settings.