Yeah, I've tried reinstalling the drive numerous times. Ensured its seated in properly and that its securely fastened. For some reason, when I start the bios after this, the computer NEVER sees the drive, and it is really annoying. Its not the housing of the drive in my laptop, because I can put my other drive in the computer and the computer recognizes it fine, so there seems to be nothing about the housing thats obstructing the connection of the drive to the computer. I'm upset and at a total lost.

Can I assume the drive is bad at this point? Is that even a common occurrence? Has it happen to anyone before?

Do you have a USB enclosure in which you could put the drive? If you do, and it fails there, it's probably bad.

By the way, I've found it cheaper to buy my laptop drives as USB "external" drives. Then I pop the case, extract the drive, and can thereafter use the case for the drive I remove from the laptop. (Locally, a 500GB USB backup drive cost about $60, and a "bare" 500GB laptop drive is around $70.)

Thats good to know for future reference.
I'd like to thank everyone for their help. It turns out it was a bad drive. Once I replaced it, It was able to work fine. Now running linux mint and loving every minute of it. I'll be loving it more once I get compiz-fuzion to work.

In any event, Thanks