I just added a shucked WD80EZAZ to my system after doing the pin masking fix. My system failed to boot, even the BIOS was inaccessible. However, my RAID controller recognised the drives and it seemed like all was well otherwise. It appears that a corrupted GPT is at least partially to blame as others have seen this issue. On Linux the solution is as follows:
Boot the system as normal with the drive plugged into the power supply as normal but with the SATA connector disconnected.
Once your OS has booted, log in and fix the GPT when prompted. I also deleted the existing FAT partition.
~ # parted /dev/$THE_DISK
GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sdg
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.