Hard Drive issues

I am having problems with my late 2009 MBP and I am hoping someone can help. About 10 days ago I was writing a paper in Pages and the computer locked up. I did a restart only to have the same thing happen almost immediately. I restarted again but this time I got the grey screen with the question mark. I inserted the boot up disk and went to Disk Utilities to try repairing the HD but it couldn't be found. I ordered a new HD, as well as an enclosure from Amazon, to try to pull some of my files off. I installed the new HD but when I got back to Disk Utilities the HD still wasn't located. After doing some research it seems that the HD cables go bad in my model, so I ordered a new one. In the meantime I used the enclosed to boot up both of the HDs and both are working without any problems. In fact I used the old HD in the enclosure for close to three hours without any issue. The new cable arrived yesterday but after installing it I am having the same issues. It's possible that I received a DOA cord but I can feel both drives spinning when connected. I'm not sure what else it could be other than the logic board. Does anyone have any ideas?

Since the super drive is working just fine is it possible to use something like this for my HD? http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody...UTF8&colid=3IBTTPFESEG6Z&coliid=ISGBQ4LZ57B98

If I used that I would be leaving the HD bay empty. Is this ok? I am assuming that I will need to use the Option button after every restart to get it to boot but will there be any other issues? As a student I don't have a lot of room in the budget to spend much more to get this fixed. I am open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thank you for the help!!

 

Thank you for the quick reply!! Apple Care expired October 2011 so that's not an option. I am ok with losing the DVD drive. In almost 2 years I have only used it once and that was this week using the boot disk. I believe I can get an enclosure and use it externally if necessary. Besides another cable how can I repair the SATA connection?

 

I have already tried that. It is possible that I got a bad one but it does get power to the HD as I can feel it spinning.

 

I will try that. Thank you.

 

I purchased yet another cable but neither of the hard drives are showing up. What do I try next?