'No' symbol on start-up, disk utility not recognizing internal drive

Need a little assistance.
Two days ago I was using the Macbook and it froze. Restarted and I was hit with the international no symbol. I've also gotten the blinking file folder at times when I've tried the holding down of various buttons on start-up.
I put a Hitachi 750 gb harddrive in last fall, it has been working fine up until now.
I do not have the system disk for Snow Leopard on hand, so until I can get it from my Dad, I decided to check on the system disk I actually have from the laptop purchase in 2007.
This allowed me to get to the start-up disk and disk utility area. I could not find my external harddrive in the list for a start-up, and it is the back-up using Time Machine. I also could not get the internal harddrive to be found in the utility so I could do a repair. It did seem to recognize that there is a drive, but not the actual named portion of it that contains the info.
I removed the internal and put it in an external case: my netbook recognizes that there is hardware, but does not let me access it. I attribute this to the fact that the drive is formatted for Mac and the Windows machine can't recognize the data.
My next step was to see if my old iMac would recognize the internal as an external, but since I don't know where the keyboard is and it is running an early version of OS X, figured it won't do me much good.
What is my next step? Will the Snow Leopard disk make a difference? Or is the reaction with the older system disk going to carry on the same way with Snow Leopard?
I was going to buy a Macbook Pro, but not for over another month, so I'm hoping I can figure something out with this and make it last a little longer.

I hooked my internal as an external up to my Mom's Macbook Pro and it recognized my HD. I'm thinking it is something internal with the hook-up, which is awesome, because maybe I can actually fix it!!!! Any thoughts?

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When two hard drives are attached to the same data ribbon cable, connected to the same IDE controller, one drive must be configured as "master," and the other drive configured as "slave." This is accomplished by placing a plastic jumper (sometimes two jumpers) across a specific pair (or pairs) of pins on the back end of the drive. If the manufacturer didn't apply a label to the drive with jumper designations, the user manual or manufacturer's web site will have the info needed for that specific hard drive. The drive connected at the end of the ribbon cable should be configured as master, and the drive connected to the middle connector as slave. If the 80 GB drive isn't mounting, it's probably configured the same as the 120 GB, so check both drives.

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OS X Disk Utility not recognizing Seagate 3TB drive in dock
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Hi all my trusty macbook 13 inch 5 years old has let me down get a box with question mark in it when i switch on , so apple support tells me to try ans start by back up OSX 10.4.9 disk the built in drive doesnt work so i am using an external toshiba drive .
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I think that Pricewatch is an excellent place to compare prices of hard drives, but if you want to make sure you get a reliable drive and/or don't want to have to do quite so much hunting and comparing, Newegg might be the best place to go.
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Answer
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"Start-up disk does not have enough space to be partitioned"??

Hi there, I hope someone can help.
I've been using bootcamp for a couple of years but recently it has started to play up so I decided to reinstall a fresh. I went into OSX and ran "boot camp assistant" and deleted the partition and start again. For some reason when I try to go though "bootcamp assistant" to set up windows xp again I get an error saying "Start-up disk does not have enough space to be partitioned - You must have 10g of space available" But I check my space available I have 23.5gb free. It's driving me nuts! :/
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Repair the Hard Drive
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
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A. Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive.
Source means the internal startup drive.
B. Boot from the clone.
Restart the computer. After the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the large downward pointing arrow button.
C. Use Disk Utility to erase the internal hard drive.
D. Restore the clone to the internal hard drive.
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
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Destination means the internal drive.
Source means the external drive.
*Note that the Destination and Source drives are reversed when you restore the clone from when you made the clone.*

'No' symbol on start-up, disk utility not recognizing internal drive

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