Thanks for the replies guys.

I was aware of the cable issue, and indeed, my cable is believed to have been one of those from the 'dodgy' batch. A quick visual inspection of it didn't show anything obvious, but I've recrimped it anyway.

The connector on the Empeg motherboard is also okay, so don't think it can be this. The jumpers on the drives are also set correctly.

I'm retesting things now, and it certainly seems that recrimping the cable has helped. I'm also going to speak to the previous owner of the new 30G disk, just to see if they'd had any problems with it.

Thanks again,

Bagpuss.