P4C800-E Deluxe SATA ports disappeared

The internal SATA ports on my mobo stopped working all of a sudden. Has anyone else had this problem? I have a HDD and DVD drive connected via SATA and they are no longer recognized in the BIOS. I have tried unplugging and re-plugging with no success.
This same thing happened about a year ago and ASUS sent me another board. I prefer to not go through the RMA process again if possible.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!

only thing i can think of is clear you cmos

I assume you haven't done anything that would have reset your BIOS? Recently flash it or have some kind of failure that led to it resetting somehow? I had some problems about a year ago when I did wiped my system and I couldn't remember exactly what settings I had.

From the sounds of it, I'm guessing you haven't changed anything - if it just suddenly happened one day when you started up.

Only thing I could suggest is to double-check the BIOS to see if the MAIN-->IDE CONFIGURATION settings somehow got switched up. I'm assuming you were using the ICH5R SATA connections (top pair) and not the Promise Controller connections (bottom pair). In that case, you'd be looking more for changes in the ADVANCED-->ONBOARD DEVICES CONFIGURATION-->ONBOARD PROMISE CONTROLLER settings.

No ideas otherwise - I'm probably just suggesting what you already know to look for and have already checked. Hope you can get it working. Mine's has put in exactly 3 good years of reliable service, as of today.

the settings were exactly the same as before; using the top sata ports and had the promise controller disabled. after unplugging and plugging for about 45 minutes; it finally booted again. Strange...