Upgrade Options for Internal Hard Drive on dv2000t Laptop (Installation Problems)

Question

I need to replace a failed hard drive in my 2006 dv2000t laptop.  The drive I'm replacing was already a replacement drive from the original 80GB drive that shipped with laptop.  That first replacement 3 years ago (2008) was a 200GB drive, that worked well for about 3 years.  But it just crashed (apparently).  I was getting some "S.M.A.R.T" imminent drive failure warnings a week prior, and then it finally would no longer boot-up.  Subsequent tests on the extracted drive show it as having many failed sectors.
I had no problem ordering a replacement drive the first time in 2008, restoring an Acronis backup image of original drive, installing it, etc.  All went smoothly in 2008.   So I assumed all would go smoothly again for yet another replacement and upgrade.
In 2008 the drive I ordered was a W.D. (Western Digital, sticking with the same brand as original) 2.5-in 5400rpm SATA drive (200GB).  That was a SATA (I) drive (1.5 Gbit/s interface). 
The first drive I recently ordered (Mar 2011) was a W.D 2.5-in 7200rpm 500GB SATA II (3.0 Gbits/s interface) drive (from W.D.'s "Scorpio Black" line.)   Got the drive, burned the disc image to it, and popped it into the laptop.  Unfortunately, upon startup, and after BIOS screen, all I get is a black screen with a fast flashing white cursor at the top of the screen.  Drive apparently is not being recognized by the computer?  Then I did some reading in a few on-line forums and found some references about this laptop not doing well with drive capacities over 320GB, nor with 7200rpm drives (because they run hotter than 5400 drives).  And finally, references to the SATA interface speed.  I ordered a 2nd drive, this one from W.D's "Scorpio Blue" line, this time a 5400rpm 320GB drive (but still SATA II).  Same story, still won't work.  So I decided that maybe the issue was the SATA speed.  So I found someone who still had an older SATA (1.5 GBit/s) W.D. drive in stock .  It's a W.D. SATA 250GB (no longer made).  It should arrive in a couple days -- and I'm hoping this one works!
I would like to get some kind of confirmation about the blinking white cursor on the black screen on start-up.  Is that typicalif the system not finding a bootable hard drive?  Also, is this SATA vs. SATA-II issue a likely cause of my problem?   I'm pretty sure there's nothing wrong with the new drives themselves, and the restored images on them , as the drives will mount and are accessible when I plug them in as external drives on my other computer.
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Answer 1

I have been able to solve my own hard drive installation problems.  It turns out that there were no issues with any of the new replacement drive(s) I ordered (thinking I had ordered drives with the wrong specs).  The solution to the problem was a simple one.  The restored drives were not booting because there was no MBR (Master Boot Record) on the drives after disc image restoration.
I am using Acronis True Image Home 2011 as my disc imaging (backup) software.  And I just didn't understand how to properly restore backed up images to a new hard drive.  I had done everything correctly except that I had not checked the box to "restore MBR" -- at the time not understanding what that was or its significance.  Once I checked that box, and reimaged the new drive, it worked fine.