Hard drive sllloooowwww.

OK folks, here's my problem. I bought a used Maxtor 93073U6 30 GB hard drive from a guy at work. Installed it in a computer and tried to format it. The format took almost 48 hours!!! Here is a list of components in the computer.
Motherboard -- Asus P4C800 E
CPU Intel Celeron 2.4 GHz
Memory 2 Sticks 1 Hynix 512 MB HYMD564646CP8J-D43 AA
1 Samsung 128 MB (not sure of model.)
Hard drive - Maxtor 93073U6 30 GB 5400 rpm
Operating System - Windows 2000 Professional
CD ROM - 40x (not sure of brand.)
AMI BIOS ver 1023 (I think this is the latest version from Asus)
BIOS settings for hard drive were set to Auto
Tried setting PIO to 0 which did not help.

I know that memory sticks do not match so will run at single speed. But I removed Maxtor and replaced it with Wester Digital 7200 rpm 20 GB and formatted it in about 10 minutes. I also put the Maxtor drive in my main system which has same motherboard but a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz processor and matching sticks of Kingston memory totalling 1 GB. That machine is running Windows XP Pro. Started the format on the Maxtor over 2 hours ago and it's at 10 percent. BTW before I started the format on my main system I ran Power Max diagnostics on the drive and it passed. I also did a low level format using the latest version of Power Max. Is a 5400 rpm drive that much slower than a 7200 or what? Any ideas on what's wrong? If you need any other info please let me know and I will supply it. I am at a loss as to what to try next! Thanks in advance for any help.