Couple things....
First, have you tried changing around it's position on the IDE cable and/or the Slave/Master jumper? You might also try another HD on the IDE channel to make sure it's not a dead IDE channel. 

Second, one hard drive tool I love to use is BootIT Next Generation. You can download the floppy creator from their web site and as I understand it, as long as you aren't installing the tool on the hard drive, you do not have to license the tools. You can used it for wipe or partitioning.

Third, I have used DBAN, but found something I like better. IBM Secure Data Disposal. 
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=TVAN-SDD

Hmmm, version 1.3, maybe I'll update since I'm using v1.2 (you will need a Windows computer to install the program which creates the floppy).

BootIT NG can also perform a "secure" wipe of a hard drive. The IBM tool performs the wipe to DOD standards (5x) while the BootIT NG wants to perform 35x wipe, but you can stop it at any time. 

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Todd Young

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Christopher Howard <seehow at iphouse.com>
> I got ahold of an old pc that has a bunch of some one elses personal
> stuff on it.  I decided to wip the drive and got a utility called DBAN
> off source forge.  It's suposed to scrambe the contents.  I used it, but
> the log file said it didn't do anything, it was too short a period of
> time anyways I noticed.  Now the BIOS doesn't see the drive.  I had a
> similar problem when trying to do a low level format on an old Connor
> drive.  I assumed that the company that bought Connor had the formater
> rigged.  Some how something on the disk was changed, it's not trash, I
> still want to use it.  Does anyone know anything about this sort of
> situation?  It's a western digital caviar drive, 6.4GB.  I've already
> tried manualy entering in the c/h/s.  The bios acts like there is no
> disk hooked up.
> 
> 
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