It looks as if the hard drive itself is bad, as when I plug the cable into the other hard drive it makes good contact, and boots up fine. But I have to actually put quite a bit of force on the back of the cable on the problematic hard drive in order for it to spin up properly. And as soon as I remove the pressure of my hand, the hard drive loses its connection and powers down. I tried with both connectors.. I guess I will call IBM tommorow and see if I can get a RMA in progress.

So.. did laptop drives come standard with 3 year warranties as well, like standard ones used to?