hard drive not present in disk utility?

[excalibur313]

I have an old powerbook g4 running 10.3. Recently on boot up i got the question mark folder icon. I booted off a leopard install cd and went to disk utility and it doesn't even see that a drive is there. Does this mean that I am out of luck or what should my next step be?

PS- I actually got it to boot up and the disk utility says the smart status is failing, so i think it might be time to jump ship...

 

[isleofjib]

i just had the same thing happen and it was the hard drive that failed. back up and replace would be my advice.