Thanks. We all will keep looking too of course. Problems like this drive all of us nuts here. If you get the answer first please post it.
When you say you were previously having problems using the drives...what were those problems? I would think they possibly are related. Were these drives installed by you personally?

Have you tried the HP Live Chat line? I have used this multiple times for various problems and it really helped each time. Even for things which were out of warranty. Don't know if Sony has the same thing or not but you might look into it.