My HD caviar wd 500GB starts it's functon test then switches off. The front light comes on for about half a second, then all stops.

Is the "dead" hard drive 80GB? or 500GB?
I presume you set up this hard drive as the second hard drive, or as an external drive. You can do these:
1. Disk Management (check the readablility):
Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management (please run as administrator; right click it), Disk Management. Is this hard drive info exist in this screen? If it is, then the hard drive is not dead.
Click on the hard drive info, right click, and you can do some actions (format, expand the volume, assign a drive letter, etc.)
2. If necessary, test and fix it using Norton Utilities (download and run it):
http://download.cnet.com/Norton-Utilities/3000-18512_4-10907620.html

Hard drive testing of the WD is done with operating system tools that are in the system tools drop down menu. to test the hard drive in Windows follow the instructions at this link

Hi dharding133
I would be inclined to use Partition Wizard . It's free and will do the job in a few clicks : http://download.cnet.com/Partition-Wizard-Home-Edition/3000-2094_4-10962200.html
Best regards ,
fanaudi ,

Being SATA and within the limitds of the MB, the HD WD Caviar will works fine

Please verify that your jumper settings on the new HD are set to Slave. If not move the jumper to the correct setting and reboot the PC.

If you've got the xp installation disk, create a partition on that drive and then use the windows 7 disk.

Make sure power is connected to video card, Check standoffs, make sure no extras shorting mobo, Make sure video card is plugged in slot properly. Post mobo - cpu - ram - video card out of case. if all ok then mount with proper standoffs.

what are the jumper setting on the hard drive. make sure the old one is the master and the new one the slave.

If your second hard drive is new, it may not be partitioned. You will need to follow the steps at this Microsoft website.

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/d9a4d35e-efdf-406c-a049-0860180129a71033.mspx#EFB

i had exactly the same problem with a WD 500gb External HD MyBook Edition USB , eventually opened up the case removed the 500gb Caviar disk put it in an external HD Case (AC Ryan's AluBox)
and still had I/O error !!! i had serious music projects and stuff i didnt want to lose , after lots of research and looking around this program SAVED MY LIFE AND ALL OF THE STUFF IN THE HARD DISK !!!!
Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional v6.20 retail first i run the simple in-depth diagnostics then i used the EasyRecovery DataRecovery option and after about an hour of scanning started copy-pasting all my files onto another disk ! this app saved my life a special thanks to its programmers ! im John from Greece , hope this helps bro!