What's wrong with my computer hard-drives?

I consider myself a pretty tech savvy guy, but even this has me stumped. I'm running a Windows Vista 32-bit OS and have a 320 GB HDD that's full. I tried to add a 1.5TB HDD. I managed to get it formatted, but it only worked about 2 weeks before that HDD failed, and I sent it in for a replacement. When I got the new (refurbished) HDD, I can't even get it to format. It errors out with a quick format, and locked up around 73% if I do a long format. I talked to tech support who was completely unhelpful/unsuccessful in helping me get it formatted. So I gave up and bought a 2TB HDD, but I can't get it to format either.

A quick search online did reveal that 32-bit Vista may not allow HDD over 1TB, and the solution was to partition the HDD into sections no larger than 1TB. After partitioning the HDD's I was able to get both the 1.5TB HDD and the 2TB HDD to format the first 1TB partition, however any and all subsequent partitions will not format.

What's up with that? Is there any way make full use of these HDDs in my 32-bit Vista OS? Is something else the problem?