MacBook won't recognize _any_ kind of internal hard drive

The subject might seem a bit generalized, but it's based on the fact that two hard drives (both almost new, and fully functional externally) fail to be recognized inside the MacBook. Anyway, here's my MacBook's (somewhat detailed) history:
It's a 2.16Ghz BlackBook bought at an Apple reseller in Korea in (late) January of 2008, with 1GB RAM installed. Since it wasn't one of the new Santa Rosa ones, it came with a Tiger install disk, but the sellers there copied an image of OS X Leopard onto the Mac from another hard disk with Leopard installed (does that break any laws?).
I used it with no problems until a few weeks ago, when the hard drive failed due to a head crash (click of death, though I never got to check if it was a Seagate). Currently living in Japan, I had the hard drive replaced under warranty at some Apple support place (I don't think it was a Genius Bar, though) a few weeks ago. They reinstalled Leopard for me. I also placed an order from OWC for a new 250GB, 5400rpm Hitachi Travelstar.
However, from the time of the hard drive replacement, my system began to act funky. There were minor system pref. errors, the bluetooth module would show up as unrecognized at random intervals, the Internet Sharing (over wireless) completely stopped working, and applications tended to hang a lot more often.
I bought an external USB enclosure for my 250GB drive yesterday. Following directions from ifixit.com, I took out the 160GB drive from inside my mac and put it in the enclosure, and put the 250GB drive inside. I booted into the now-external 160GB drive to format my 250GB drive, but Disk Utility failed to recognize it. I tried using Disk Utility while booting from my Tiger disks and also the Apple Hardware Test, but they couldn't find any problems. Resetting the PRAM and reseating the hard drive didn't do anything, either.
Frustrated, I tried swapping the two drives. It then wouldn't recognize the internal 160GB drive, but would recognize the external 250GB drive as unformatted (booting from Tiger disk). Skeptical, I swapped the two drives once again, fiddled around with Disk Utility a bit more, swapped again, split the 250GB drive (now external again) into three partitions, and installed Tiger into the first partition.
Okay, so Tiger worked. It still wouldn't recognize the 160GB drive inside the MacBook, but at least it booted. But since I had all my data on my 160GB drive, and guessed I wouldn't be fixing this anytime soon anyway, I swapped the two drives for one final time to this configuration, with the 160GB in the external enclosure and the 250GB inside the MacBook.
Though the question might be obvious, does anyone know what might be wrong? Could I accidentally have damaged the hard drive connector inside while installing the drive? Is it a logic board failure? I hope I haven't voided my warranty or anything, cause it's barely been three months using this laptop.. and the retail price was bloated to begin with since it was imported..
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and for any help

the sellers there copied an image of OS X Leopard onto the Mac from another hard disk with Leopard installed (does that break any laws?).
Yes, that was illegal. The sellers should have either reinstalled the version of Mac OS X that came with the system or given/sold you the entire retail package for Leopard.
As to your disk problem, I can think of three possibilities:
1) You aren't getting the drive fully seated. Make sure you're not putting it in upside down.
2) The connector was damaged in some way. If the service center caused the problem, they should cover it, though you may have a difficult time getting them to admit that they caused the problem. If you caused the damage yourself, that would not be covered under warranty. The drive is considered a user-installable part, but if you cause any damage while installing the drive, that is not covered.
3) Your system has a logic board problem with the SATA port.
If the first possibility doesn't pan out, then a trip back to the service center is going to be in order.
Good luck.

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