i'm not sure if you answered the other guy's question, is it ATA/133 ? According to an article i read on another computer page, NTFS format is required for these drives? Not sure if thats what it said entirely. But that solved my problem. you might want to try using that. I actually did it through Windows i think
ATA100 can support drives up to around 120gig, anything over that needs ATA133. It doesn't matter if its FAT32 or not, I have Fat32 formats on 100gig drives and its no problem, and his drive is only 40gig. Either its his harddrive or the mobo (if he has bad memory, it will do that too, like crash on start-up). Enabling S.M.A.R.T (in the BIOS, if the drive is attached to the mobo controller)for the harddrive may also help. Cables should be ATA100-133 compatible. Oh, and one more thing, if using the RAID controller on the KT7A-RAID ( a mobo I once had) under Win2000/XP, when installing the OS, you should have the latest Highpoint drivers in a disk and use the F6 option to specify additional devices.
As for Maxtor drives, I've owned almost all brands of harddrives and MAxtor is the most reliable. Just try the drives in a different mobo and if they still don't work, just RMA it if under warranty.