As a followup to this thread the NEW 40G Hitachi Travelstar drive was found to be defective it wouldn't even show up for the Drive Fitness Test. Hitachi sent a new one back to me & will soon be installed.
The old drive it was replacing is showing errors using smartctl but amazingly still works so I'll keep it til it dies.
Thanks to all for the help w/this, great board but I knew that coming in.