Good drive gives Disk1: I/O Error in OSX boot up

[Munky^]

I have a 2.5" drive that I'm connecting via a converter to a normal IDE connector. (Note this isn't an active converter like SATA to IDE, just a wire)

 

The drive works fine in XP, but in OSX on bootup it gives Disk1: I/O Error every time, and Disk Utility sees the drive (but never any partitions on it), and can not create partitions - when I try to create partitions it just hangs. (This is booting OSX off a separate good drive)

 

I've tried the drive on both primary and secondary connectors, and it does the same thing.

 

Because of the cable the drive can't share the IDE connector with another, so I can't put the good OSX drive on primary master and the erroring drive on primary secondary, etc.

 

Any ideas what this is or how to diagnose/fix appreciated.