Western Digital 500GB doesn't work correctly

I have Disk Director 10 and the latest build, running XP Pro SP3 and all the latest updates.

The WD external drive was converted to NTFS.

Then I copies some files to it via copy and paste. That worked fine and explore seen the files.

Started Disk Director (DD) and when the progress bar said initializing G drive (that is the WD external drive) the system hangs. Task manager won't delete task, says it does but the process is still running.

Now if when I boot, the WD drive is not powered on and I start DD all works fine. Then I plug in the WD external drive and DD picks it up and all is fine. I can change labels etc. At that point I can even stop DD and start it up again and it does the initialization.

Then if I reboot and leave the WD up and running, then try to start DD, it again hangs when initializing.

I am testing the Acronis home V11 now.

Anyway anyone got any suggestions on why DD and the WD 500GB drive act so weird? My old IOMEGA 80 GB external worked fine.