Yip, just spent the best part of 7 hours f00king about with my ESXI setup and wondering why it took twice as long to do a installation of Win2012 server on a ST2000DM001, as compared to an older Samsung F1 drive. I tried every imaginable combo and eventually realised the drive is duff. Hence me landing up at this post 
I ended up flashing the latest firmware to the ST2000DM001, but it made no difference. And I tried the same model HD out of my gaming rig and both end up working like sh!te on ESXI 5.1 U1.
Just popped in an older Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drive and it also works just fine. So something is screwed with the ST2000DM001 on ESXI. On my Win8 rig its just fine!?!?!?
loiphin.