Just try and Recrimp the ends of the cable, it might be that one of the wires got pulled out / a bad connection was made. About the HDD, I had a similar incident with my new 80gb SATA Drive, I had it for around a month, and it just crapped out one day after taking some stuff out of the box ( I was gentle too
) And much like yours, it just worked again for no apparent reason....Kinda odd I thought. Anyway Give the crimping a try, might save you some cash.