Q: Can not format or erase hard drive using disk utility

I was having boot issues where I couldn't boot into OSX. Thought the hard drive was bad.

So I installed OSX on a flash drive, booted with that drive and used Diskwarrior to save my files.

I purchased a new hard drive and tried 100 different times to format the drive using disk utility.

It would not work. Would get input/output error and can't allocate memory error.

POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory

and

POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Input/Output error

For fun I put the old drive back in (which accord to all reports the health was fine) and that wouldn't format either.

Upon research, could be the SATA cable. Won't know until I swap the cable.

If it is the cable how was disk warrior able to communicate with the drive?

If not the cable, any ideas on why I can't format?