Blinking folder with question mark icon upon start up? Disk or SATA?

Long story short, disk utility is unable to repair the "Macintosh HD" disk. Re-installing mountain lion is not an option due to the computer's inability to detect the HDD disk. How do I differentiate between a corrupted (dead) hard drive or a broken SATA cable (in which acts as a medium)?
Note: my intentions are to fix the issue instead of resorting to apple care.
Thanks in advance

If you have a  known functioning boot drive, you can substitute that for the internal HDD.
You can try to use your current drive externally.  Use Startup Manager and if the external HDD appears, select it.  If it boots the MBP, then that is an indication that the SATA cable is faulty.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1310
Ciao.

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    The hatter wrote:
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