Find the LBA value which is printed on the HDD's label or in the manual and compare it to the "total number of blocks" output by HDToolbox in the geometry section. The number of blocks should match the LBA as closely as possible, but it must not be higher.
If this is right, the geometry should be ok. Other values don't matter. Only the number of blocks per cylinder should be big enough so that two cylinders can hold the file system code and the partition table. For IDE harddrives 1008 or 2016 blocks per cylinder are usual values.
Increase the number of buffers per partition to increase speed. Or use more advanced file systems like SFS or PFS3.
