One of my friends had this problem with his empeg. Turned out the IDE Header from the mainboard had a few broken connections, Took about 2 minutes to fix, thankfully another friend does mainboard repair for a living
. His wasn't saying No hard drive found, it would just lockup at the empeg screen.
So look very carefully at the ide pins coming off the board, if they are cracked, then you have some bad headers. It’s very hard to notice, i'm quite surprised that i actually noticed them. Too bad my friend got his off ebay, i had to fix it for him, otherwise i would have sent it back to support.
1 more month of warranty for the most beloved device on the planet
His headers broken when he tossed his empeg onto his bed, it bouced pretty good onto the floor, and stopped working