The place I used to work for had lots of 5170's. At first the drives were Seagate ST-4026 (20MB), then they became the IBM 0665 (30MB).
In fact, the IBM 0665 (being a type 20) was not supported in the 5170 until the second BIOS revision.
In my experience, a 'no drive' type error is a very basic 'I cant find a hard drive' error. As different XT controllers can have different cabling/select requirements, try the following:
1. The drive select jumper (adjacent to the power connector) is set for '2' for the standard 5170 controller. Try position '1'.
2. Try the alternate connector of the hard drive cable.
3. Try combinations of 1 and 2
You will almost certainly have to low-level format the drive (different hard drive controller chip families usually use different low-level formats).
Re your "Unfortunately I don't have any other controllers to try it with, other than the original 10 and 20MB ones in my XTs!"
If the above hasn't got you working, try your 5160 10/20MB controller cards. That's fine, because at this point, all you want to do is determine basic serviceability (get past the 'no drive' error). All cylinders/heads won't be used - it doesn't matter at this point. You will need to use the connector on the cable that's before the twist, and the drive select jumper will need to be changed to '1'. Low-level format using Speedstor 6.05 (6.05 is for XT class machines) or similar, or whatever.