hard drive problems heeeellppp!

o.k i got an maxtor 300 gig sata2 hard drive from the pc fair, now i know my mainbord (msi k8n neo plat) dose not have sata2 controller, but the hard drive has a jumper so it can be set to sata.
the bios picks up the hard drive, but some how windows will not let me partition it, i'v also ran the maxtor hard drive test's and it pass's all of them.
is this a case of i realy need an sata2 port ? if so where can i get one form ? or is the drive knackered and needs to be rmaed ?
edit, while trying to set up a partition, windows says to look in the event log and that says it's a cable problem it's tryed another sata cable and i still get the same error

Try running speedfan / hdtune and see how the SMART going, and do a surface scan.

I had a maxtor 300g dead on arrival, it is not that uncommon

speed fan says it's all runing fine.