Strange hard drive problem

Toshiba laptop, Win7 X64 Home Premium... the original HD crashed, it's gone. I installed a new 500gb SATA drive, it's recognized in BIOS, but Win7 setup reports that add'l drivers are needed and doesn't list the drive or any partitions (I also tried formatting the drive on a different PC, put it back in the laptop, but still no dice) ... So I pulled it, installed a used 160gb SATA drive, Win7 picks it up w/o a problem, and I installed the OS w/o any problems. Hmmm... So I tried a new 250gb SATA drive, and again Win7 reports that add'l drivers are needed. So, why does Win7 setup only seem to work with a used 160gb drive, but not with a new 250gb or 500gb drive?

 

Oh yeah - I tried cloning the working 160gb drive to the new 500gb, and it still doesn't boot, it crashes saying a "boot device is inaccesible".

 

This is a guess but is the SATA drive being replaced 1.5GB/S? If the drives being installed are the newer faster drives, they have a jumper that will slow them down to 1.5GB/S for compatibility with older controllers. Maybe a BIOS issue? But then why would it see the drives?

 

I did flash the BIOS and it makes no difference. The laptop is fairly new, Win7 X64, Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7305. The original drive was a WD 500gb SATA. I happened to have a brand new replacement drive that was the exact same make/model as the original drive so I don't see how it could be 1.5 vs 3.0 speed issue.... this is truly one of the strangest issues I've come across in recent months. The client needs the laptop so he agreed to the used 160gb drive (plus it saved him some money), and I've explained everything in detail to the client, and I explained that there may be a faulty I/O controller on the motherboard, so if this drive crashes in a similar manner to the original, then we know it's likely a bad mobo, and he'd get partial credit back toward the mobo repair or replacement.... I also explained the need for regular back up of important data to flash drives, external drives, CD/DVD, the cloud, whatever... if you have important I-can't-live-without-it data on your PC, it should be backed up regularly, and if it's REALLY important, back it up to two or more places....

Strange problem though.... :confused