K8N Neo Platinum and Maxtor SATA II 250GB 6V250F0

Question

Hi folks,
Having a bit of fun with this one.  After first installing the new hard drive (Maxtor SATA II 250GB 6V250F0) , the BIOS immediately recognised it, I could boot into Windows, and Windows recognised it, and I thought I was in for a smooth ride.  Sadly, the good news ends there.
Tried to initialise the disk, but this simply gave an error after a few seconds, and wrote a whole load of controller error messages to the system event log.  Since then, I've done the following troubleshooting steps:-
(1) Tried in Normal Mode and Safe Mode, made no difference.
(2) Tried with the jumper on the back of the drive set to limit it to SATA I, as I'm connecting to SATA I controllers on the motherboard.  Made no difference with it on or off.  Tried a second jumper just in case the first one was faulty; still made no difference.
(3) Tried using different power cables and molex connectors; made no difference.
(4) Tried using different data cables; made no difference.
(5) Tried connecting to each of the four SATA ports; made no difference.  Tested each port with another drive ((an older Maxtor SATA I drive, which has always worked fine), and they each worked fine.
(6) Tried with and without another SATA drive (an older Maxtor SATA I drive, which has always worked fine); made no difference.
(7) Checked the drive firmware (VA111630); apparently already the latest.
(8) Used the nVidia registry fix to disable NCQ; made no difference.
(9) Disabled write caching; made no difference.
(10) Ran powermax 4.22 to test the drive, and it reports no problems with the drive at all.  Did the full surface scan just in case, and a burn-in test; these also reported no problems.  Curiously, they also reported no problems when I did the same tests with the back jumper removed; i.e. running it in SATA II mode when connected to a SATA I port apparently didn't bother powermax.  Go figure.
The only way I've got anything to happen with the drive so far is to set it to run in PIO mode(!), which I did briefly, and which enabled the drive to be initialised in Windows.  Haven't tried much else in that mode yet, not least because I have no intention of actually using it in that mode for obvious reasons.
So...we have a perfectly functioning disk, attached to a perfectly functioning SATA port, with supposed complete compatibility between them, and with pretty much all other bases covered, and the end result is...it doesn't work.
Has *anyone* got this particular drive model (Maxtor 6V250F0) to work with a K8N Neo Platinum, and if so, how???  ???  ???

Answer 1

Latest Update (this is a real Twilight Zone one ):
LOL, well I should have known better than to be optimistic about anything where this drive is concerned.  With Windows drivers installed, it seemed to work okay as a storage drive.  So I then installed XP on it, and sure enough it hangs when loading the OS.  As the next test, I did a clean install of XP on an IDE drive I have installed, which worked fine (could boot no problems).  I then cloned that to the Maxtor drive (the clean OS had no nVidia drivers installed), and not only did the Maxtor drive fail to boot, but so did the IDE drive (even though nothing has changed on that drive!)    Both would hang at the Windows loading screen.  So then I deleted the partition on the Maxtor drive, so it was effectively back to the situation where the IDE drive booted okay previously (with a blank Maxtor drive attached), but now it continued to fail to load.  If I unplugged the Maxtor drive, however, then the IDE drive would boot.  If I then re-attached the Maxtor drive, the IDE drive would still boot, even though that would be exactly the same situation in which it didn't boot before the Maxtor unplug and replug.  In short, it simply makes no sense whatsoever.  ???
A summary of facts/findings:-
(1) System works fine; all components checked and pass diagnostic tests, no Windows problems in the event log or device manager, no random crashes or anything like that.  The Maxtor drive passes Powermax tests fine.
(2) If the Maxtor drive is attached while using nVidia drivers, it cannot be used at all.
(3) If the Maxtor drive is attached while using Windows drivers (in UDMA6 mode), it can be used in some circumstances (described as follows).
(4) If the Maxtor drive has no OS installed on it, it can be used fine.
(5) If the Maxtor drive has an OS installed on it, it will hang at boot time.
(6) If the Maxtor drive has an OS installed on it, other drives (being booted from) will hang at boot time. 
(7) If another drive has failed to boot because the Maxtor drive has an OS on it, deleting all data/partitions from the Maxtor drive will not enable the first drive to boot.
(8) If another drive has failed to boot because the Maxtor drive has/had an OS on it, unattaching the Maxtor drive will enable it to boot once again.
(9) Once another drive has managed to boot again, the Maxtor drive can be reattached (with data/partitions having been deleted), and it will boot again.  If it still has the OS on it, however, it will cause the first drive to hang again.
(10) None of this highly abnormal behaviour is experienced using a Samsung Spinpoint drive (with the same SATA II interface) instead.
What really puzzles me about this is the apparent memory of the system for the previous boot.  (7) and (9) above are identical in the conditions of the drives when the boot is made, and the only difference in the situation is that before (7) the previous boot has failed, and before (9) the previous boot has succeeded.  How/why that should influence the current boot (after a hard reset, with power down in between to ensure no residual current effects), and why this should interact with the Maxtor drive but not any other drive, is a complete mystery.  It's also pretty odd that an OS can boot when the Maxtor drive has ordinary data on it, but will hang if the Maxtor drive has an OS on it.
There is clearly a lot more going on here than any standard version of the way OSs boot and load drivers can account for.