hdd not reconized in disk managment

Doesn't make sense to me. One thing to try is to download the HD manufacturers tools and partition it the way you want and then check if it can be seen in Disk Management.

OK tried that. the drive is a western digital. in the diagnostic software the drive is recognized and show the correct model number adn size of drive. the data life guard tools just tells me the software is already running on my system. when i try the test the software states "read diagnostic sector error"

Are you using the bootable DOS version? If not, then try it. You can burn the ISO to CD with ISO Recorder. Also if you have another cable to try temporarily, then swap cables.

If it's not the cable, and it's probably not, then I think it's a bad drive.

i appreciate your help. i will try your suggestion and post again tomorrow. unfortunately school work calls. at thirty years of age, that really sucks to have to say. thanks again.

i thought i would post one last time with my results. on my xp machine the drive shows up in bios and in device manager but not "in my computer" or "storage manager". i moved the hard drive to a vista machine and again shows up in bios and device manager. this time it also showed up in storage manager but i can not initialize the drive. the tools provide by western digital will not allow me to do anything. also on the vista machine when i tried to initialize the drive i get an "i/o write error" i figure its a bad drive but thought i could try one more time if any one has any new suggestion. thanks

got my new drive, installed the drive and look at that work perfectly.