Your operating system boots from a hard drive.
The P5k-SE is a motherboard made by Asus, a computer hardware manufacturer known for it's motherboards. Newer motherboards are switching to only SATA drives but the P5K-SE has connection for PATA drives as well. PATA, also known as IDE, EIDE or just ATA drives are similar to SATA drives but are usually slower. Either hard drive type should work as a boot device, however.
Instructions
1. Restart your computer. Look for the message on the screen that lists which key to press to enter either "Setup" or the BIOS. Press the key and look for the boot order option. Choose the boot order to the PATA hard drive.
2. Open your computer case. Disconnect all of the other hard drives. This will help determine if there are any conflicts. If the drive boots after this, you must install the other drives back one at a time and recheck the BIOS to make the other drives lower in the boot order.
3. Check the master-slave setting on the back of the drive. There is a jumper that can be set to make the hard drive the master, slave, single or cable select. There will be a diagram on top of the drive showing the settings. Change the setting to single or master. Make sure the hard drive is connected to the outermost cable connection on the hard drive cable. Try a different cable as well.
4. Replace the drive if nothing else works. Format the hard drive, install an operating system and make sure all of the BIOS and jumper settings are correct on this new drive as well.
Tags: hard drive, boot order, operating system, other drives, SATA drives, your computer