External Drive Disk Erase Failed with the Error Input/Output Error

I have 2 hard drives in an external FW800 enclosure that I am unable to format. When I go to initialize the drives in Disk Utility, I get the following error message: "Disk Erase failed with the error: Input/output error."
The drives show up in Disk Utility, but I can't repair them (that option is grayed out). Disk Utility correctly ID's the manufacturer of the drives (Maxtor), their size (200gb each), so it's obviously seeing that the drives are there. But it won't let me format them.
The drives are new, by the way; they don't have any data/files on them. I have Disk Warrior, but the drives don't show up there to be repaired -- probably because they aren't formatted yet.
After looking at other posts, I tried switching the jumper settings around on the drives -- from Master/Slave to cable select and back again, but it didn't help. I also tried doing a zero erase (even though the drives are new), zapping the PRAM -- again, no help.
One question I had is whether this could be a bad FW800 cable? The cable is new -- it came with the enclosure, which is an OWC Dual FW 800 enclosure. Other than that, does anyone have any other thoughts about what's causing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Matthew

SOLUTION!!!!
I had the exact same problem. I have the original 20 GB hard drive that came in my Powerbook G4 550MHz and a couple of years ago I traded up for a 60 GB drive and bought a FW/USB enclosure for my original drive to use it to backup my important files. I hadn't backed up in over a year (shame on me!) and I decided maybe I should erase the drive and start from scratch. It was connected via USB.
At that point DiskUtility gave me the exact same Input/Output error. I tried partitioning the drive into 1 or more partitions but came up with the same error. I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I decided to startup in OS 9.2.2, I did that and let it start up, then plugged in the hard drive and it gave me the standard "This disk is unrecognizable, do you want to eject or erase?" so I clicked Initalize. It worked!
Just make sure you choose the MacOS Extended option when initializing out of OS 9 (instead of the MacOS Standard option) so it can be read and viewed in OS X.
If your computer is too new to be able to boot from an OS 9 folder on your drive or an OS 9 CD, then see if a friend or a local library has older computers that are running OS 9 or can boot from it. If not let me know and you can send me your drive and I'll reformat it.
Kind of crazy...I haven't used the OS 9 partition on my HD in YEARS...was even thinking about erasing it since I don't use any Classic applications anymore...good thing I didn't!
Nick
Powerbook G4 550Mhz   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

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