Mavericks won't boot my internal SSD in main bay

I have been running Mountain Lion from an SSD in the main internal bay of my 2011 Mackbook Pro without problem. Now I am unable to install Mavericks. I have tried multiple methods of installing to this drive but they all result in the same problem: the Mackbook appears not to see the SDD in the main bay.

I first tried installing per usual. It got part-way through the install process, but at the point where you tell the installer where to install Mavericks, the SDD fails to show up on the list.

I have now tried several methods of installing Mavericks, including a fresh install via Rescue Disk, and most recently, installing Mavericks on an external drive and then cloning the drive to the SSD. All to no avail. Mavericks runs my computer just fine off of any other drive I install it on, but it refuses to acknowledge the existence of my SSD in its main bay. If I boot from a prior version of OS10, the SSD shows up in the disk list in Disk Utility. Running Mavericks from an external disk, I am able to see the SSD in disk utility. But it simply won't boot from it.

There is nothing wrong with the SSD. I can revert to my back-up and it runs just fine off of it. I've run disk first aid and found no errors. I've done complete wipes before re-installing. The problem is specific to booting in Mavericks.

I've read online that I am not the only one with this problem, but I haven't seen a single work-around that actually works. At this point I think I have tried them all, and have wasted a whole day.

Any other ideas? Please help...! Thanks.