Can't get past folder with questions mark

System crashed, assumed hard drive, could not repair with diskutil, replaced with new drive. When attempting to partition got Posix errors, replaced with known good drive. Did the command, option, R, P, Power and still get a Folder with ?. ~Assume~ potential bad sata cable for hdd, black cable, shows what appears to be a crack.

Pulled out superdrive, installed New SSD with OS there, could not get past the boot point of WPA2 pass phrase, spinning mouse of death. So I've gotten further, but. . .Not very far into the new startup process.

I assumed it could be the cable for the harddrive, so I moved over to the optical slot, and used that cable(stubby, short one.) Which allowed me to get ~further. But . . . I also unplugged the cable for the hdd at the Motherboard, out of fear that it was causing signals to cross.

Is it worth it for me to purchase a hard drive internal sata cable ? Or is it time to head into the Genius bar?

thanks

rick