Is my hard drive the source of my CD burning woes?

This problem has been vexing me for nearly two months now. Here's the
background; I'll try to be brief:

After years of trouble-free CD burning, I've been struggling with a
real problem ... burns proceed normally until read-out,
then fail. The many, many error reports I've collected (using several
different pieces of burning software) all end more or less like this:

5:00:44 PM #21 SCSI -1066 File Cdrdrv.cpp, Line 1431
SCSI Exec, HA 1, TA 1, LUN 0, buffer 0x07770000
Status: 0x04 (0x01, SCSI_ERR)
HA-Status 0x00 (0x00, OK)
TA-Status 0x02 (0x01, SCSI_TASTATUS_CHKCOND)

[snip]

5:00:45 PM #22 CDR -1066 File Writer.cpp, Line 301
Invalid field in command

5:00:45 PM #23 Text 0 File ThreadedTransfer.cpp, Line 229
all writers idle, stopping conversion

5:00:46 PM #24 Text 0 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1658
Set remaining time: 0:00,000 (0ms) - OK

5:00:46 PM #25 Phase 38 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1800
Burn process failed at 12x (1,800 KB/s)

I've done all of the following, without fixing the problem:

(1) Clean install of Win2000
(2) Uninstall, reinstall all manner of burning software packages:
Adaptec, Roxio, Nero, Feurio
(3) Replaced old Plextor drive (and legacy CD-ROM drive) with new
Plextor DVD/CDR drive and separate Liteon CDR drive. Former uses
Roxio, latter Nero as burning software.
..

Interestingly, as was true with my old drives and continues to be true
with the new onesupon reboot I usually get two or three full burns,
then the failures begin again.

I'm pretty convinced by now that this isn't a software problem; one
error message I got using the Roxio program suggests that the drive is
"stopping" during burning. (Though there's no apparent impact on the
visible buffer reading, i.e., it doesn't drop to zero from 87% or
wherever it spends its free time during burning.) This made me think
that my four-year-old hard drive (C may in fact be the problem,
though it hasn't given me any other trouble.

I recently installed a second hard drive, which is labeled D: by
Win200. I tried copying the Roxio program folder over to my new D:
drive, along with some data files to burn, thinking that might solve
the problem ... but it didn't. I then tried to "reinstall" both the
Roxio and Nero programs to the D: drive (after uninstalling them from
the C: drive), but neither would let me do that: they both installed
to C: without offering any other option.

So here, at last, is my question. Really three questions:

(1) Does the error report above, or the anecdotal evidence I've
provided, confirm the notion that my old hard drive is the culprit?

(2) If so, what do I have to do to install one or both CD-burning
software packages to the D: drive? Is this a master/slave kinda deal?
Are there little switches and widgets and connections inside the box
that I, as a hamfisted English major, won't know how to deal with?
And if I change the parameters of both drives, will all the programs
currently on my C: drive (and functioning well) have to migrate there
too?

(3) Or should I just bite the bullet, back up as much data to CDR as
possible from C:, and replace that drive too?

I'm really at my wits' end ... so to those who persevered through all
this verbiage, TIA!

jonking