I read through that and looked at both the cable and the solder joints and all apears okay. Plus, the boot log shows that it located both hard disks but that it's getting a read error some of the time. This, to me, would kind of indicate bad sectors on the disk - is this correct? Or would it still be a good idea to try a new cable?

I know my way around a Windows box (which I know doesn't hold much water around here ) but I'm completely at a loss when exposed to a linux system.