Dell XPS Funky Behavior

[noahsheldon81]

Hello, 

My dad has a dell xps desktop computer that he got a while ago. A few days ago he called me and said "my D: drive (file storage with a few programs) is not showing up." I go down to his business and look at it. I take it out of the case and use a sata to usb cable and bam! It shows up no problem. So I replace the sata cable it was plugged in with in his tower and boot it up and it's working like nothing happened. I then get a call the very next morning and he says "my OS (Windows 7) won't boot. I have the same suspicions. I do the same thing and bam! It boots with no problem. Once again, the sata cable went bad. Now, onto the question. I was wondering what could have caused this. Surely it can't be that two sata cables happen to go bad one day after the other goes bad. I thought maybe the motherboards killing the sata cables. I have no idea if that's possible or not. Any insight you can give me would be greatly appreciated. My fear is that I replace the sata cables for him and then the cables keep going bad and maybe data corruption or loss happens some time. Once again, any insight into what might be happening or what might be wrong would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks so much.