No disk reported during OS install

[foobar17]

I have just assembled system for a new firewall and during installation of IPCop or Smoothwall it reports there is no hard drive.

The BIOS detects the hard drive fine and I have also upgraded to the latest BIOS version. I have tried both an old IDE disk and a brand new SATA disk, without any change in behaviour. When trying to install ubuntu 8.04 I could manually modify the partition table (SATA), but the formatting bailed out later.

Here are the specs:
Box: Antec NSK3480, 380W
MoBo: ASUS P5K-VM
CPU: Intel Core 2 duo 2.33GHz
Mem: Kingston DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz (2x1GB)

I think I have tried all config permutations and have run out of options; so any tips of how to proceed troubleshooting or which item to replace are highly welcome.

 

[JDocs]

If a program like FDisk can see it you just need to partition/repartition the drive. OSes can't see improperly partitioned drives.

 

[foobar17]

The problem happens during a fresh install of an OS. It's the OS installer that bails out. IPCop and Smoothwall installers both report no disk and they both wipes out the disk and partition it.