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It’s a rough morning for disk-drive stocks, thanks in no small measure to cautious comments from BMO Capital’s Keith Bachman.

Bachman today cut his rating on Xyratex (XRTX) to Market Perform from Outperform, chopping his price target on the provider of drive manufacturing equipment to $14 from $23. He writes in a research note that the stock “will have difficulty working” given three factors:

Merrill Lynch semiconductor equipment analyst Brett Hodess this morning chopped his forecast on 2009 chip industry cap ex spending to a decline of 6% from growth of 9%, and writes in a research note that “there is further downside risk due to economic and fab capacity data.”

With all the bad news in the DRAM and NAND flash memory chip market, such as the continued drastic drop in chip prices announced last week by Micron Technology (MU) — you’d be quite reluctant to buy the folks who sell the tools for DRAM. But today, Piper Jaffray chip analyst Gus Richard raised his rating on Teradyne (TER), which makes tools for both DRAM and NAND flash, to “Buy” from “Neutral,” and raised his price target to $16, from $14. That would be a nice 44% return, if the stock makes it there.