Sata Inputs seem to be dead...

[Stormgard88]

Hello all, been trying to figure out how to fix my desktop for about a week now. Hoping someone here could help me out so I don't end up spending any more money. I have a decent knowledge of Computers, but it is mostly self taught. Alot of this post is a lead in explaining what I have been doing and why, if it seems like a TL;DR thing to you, the question is actually at the bottom, last paragraph. TY!

SO... I was messing around online, went to sleep, and when I woke up my monitor had the phrase DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT BOOT DISC AND PRESS ENTER. I have had some issues with boot problems, so I messed around trying to get it to fire up. Soon, I decided that I may need to reinstall windows, so I inserted the disc and sure enough the windows disc fired up. I went through the beginnings, chose to do a fresh install (since I couldn't boot windows) and sure enough, it could not find my Hard Drive. (Either in BIOS or from the windows install)

My first thought was that my HDD had died, so I went and purchased a new one. I installed it, and hooked up the Sata cables and all that good stuff. Unfortunately, my new hard drive also is not detected, and I went through the process of trying each Sata input, and trying different power cords (I have a ton of extra cables) that I knew were working. No luck. This leads me to believe that the SATA plugs on my motherboard are what is actually dead. (I have spent time in the BIOS, It shows each of the 4 red Sata inputs, but each has nothing shown, even when I have a HDD plugged in)

SO... The real question I have is this... I have seen the PCI-E SATA controllers that can be plugged in and used as expansion slots, but can Windows boot from one of these? I honestly don't make enough money to keep buying things that will not fix the problem. I know at best this is probably a temporary solution until I can afford a new mobo, but if it can work, I would be very happy. Thank you in advance for you help!

[Perderder]

Add-in SATA cards function the same as onboard SATA controllers, and in some cases can even perform better.