T43 Hard drive not recognized unless replugged

It's a T43 with a 100GB FUJITSU MHV2100AH hard drive. Last night the blue screen came on. Upon rebooting, it displays "Operating System not found",  and the hard drive is no longer recognized. The problem persisted, until I unplugged and re-plugged the hard drive. Then the system booted normal. Today, the problem came up twice, again, and unplugging still does the trick. Hard drive has passed Ontrack EasyRecovery Full Diagnosis with minor problems (a few bad sectors), but it's not likely that the bad sectors are causing the problem, is it? Anybody has an idea what is wrong here? Thanks!

Unfortunately, I can't find where he posted that, see I also own a T42p with ATI graphics, it's been running great ever since I bought it from him (knock on wood), he commented about this symptom somewhere and I took it as a way to tell when mine would be facing the same fate (I hope that moment never comes ).
Since motherboard replacement is an expensive assumption, therefore I would first suggest you to run a complete diagnostic test through lenovo PC Doctor's bootable CD for DOS:- http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-56222
If your ThinkPad passes all tests with flying colors, then try borrowing or buying a new HDD (2.5'' ATA/IDE notebook drive), if the new HDD does the same then probably your motherboard is failing.
Following links contain some known symptoms of motherboard failure on T4x ThinkPads, check if yours exhibit any:-
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=492633#p492633
http://forums.thinkpads.com/~thinkpad/forum/viewtopic.php?p=584727#p584727
Hope this helps.
Maliha (I don't work for lenovo)
ThinkPads:- T400[Win 7], T60[Win 7], IBM 240[Win XP]
IdeaPad: U350
Apple:- Macbook Air [Snow Leopard]
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