I think there's a good argument for PM, with the caveat of partitions being rather critical in terms of total loss of data. Take care.
I would have thought the BIOS route was the place to start. Having said this, I've just put on old ESDI drive in a computer that would not boot up in the computer it had arrived in years ago. Various ribbon settings were tried. Wouldn't go as master or slave.
It had been formatted and XP loaded on another machine. Putting it back in the original produced nothing. I was convinced it was due for the trash, but on a hunch, after months, put it back into the second machine and away it went.
That drive had been F-Disk'd, but had no logical drives.
I think this would be a valid case for looking at it with PM. Sadly I can't remember exactly what the BIOS showed on the no-go machine - so not much of an example - but it did report something being there.
This had piqued my interest, so will play further when time permits.