P7230 Drive Upgrade: Error 0200 Failure Fixed Disk

I have a P7230 that I bought with a 40GB drive originally. I recently purchased a Toshiba 120GB (MK1231GAL) and a ZIF to CF adapter.

The Good:
Drive is correctly recognized in the BIOS.
Drive passes multiple third party diagnostics, as well as built in.
Able to partition, format, restore image to, etc.


The Bad:
During POST I get this error:

ERROR
0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0
Press <F1> to resume, <F2> to Setup
​

Drive will not boot after restoring image.
Cannot install Windows 7 or Vista

Error "This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."​

It appears the BIOS not setting the disk as 'bootable' for whatever reason. I upgraded to the latest BIOS 1.11 but that made no difference.

I have tried multiple partition utilities to delete/create/format with no success.

Has anyone else seen this or have any ideas?

Thanks.

*MD*

 

If all else fails may be try getting an external HD enclosure and copying OS to the HD using Acronis/Norton Ghost or similar and then upgrade.

You could also do a full backup using one of the above software.
To upgrade to a SSD in one of these laptops i'm sure that i had to do this.

 

I've considered your suggestion, but I am not aware of any external enclosures that support a 1.8" drive with ZIF connector, though I didn't do an exhaustive search.

EDIT: I just searched, and there seems to be many 1.8" external enclosures, but I still think that won't help me because of the following info

Also, I am able to get the OS on the drive:
old drive -> disk image to file on external -> restore to new drive.

I can see the partition and files, it just won't boot, because it is not be recognized as bootable. At least thats my theory.

*MD*

 

I wouldn't expect you to have these problems with this drive.
There are some Toshiba drives that are you not intended for laptops and are supposed to be used in multimedia products (iPods etc) but this is not meant to be one of them.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...stall-new-hard-drive-sony-tz-help-please.html
The spec sheet indicates that it should be fine. From my search i see that some people have had problems with this drive and others haven't.
If you try doing a backup and it doesn't work i would see if can return the drive as the drive is not compatible and intended for PATA based laptops or is either faulty.