Hi DeepC ,
I'm looking at new drives at present and have stumbled across several references to problems caused by using "old" 40 conductor (NOT 40 connector) cables on modern IDE drives.
Your post has prompted me to look into it, here is one of the better references I have found:
http://www.mikeshardware.com/howtos/...ct_ide_hd.html
Basically new drives with faster transfer rates need 80 conductor cables (twisted pair I guess) if you don't use them you get read and write errors.
I'm not sure if it is relevant to your problems, but thought i'd mention it just in case.
Memetic