HELP! 2nd Hard drive keeps disappearing. Disk Utility can't see it either!

I'm hoping 1 of you experts can help me out with a very annoying problem.
November 17th I purchased a new hard drive for my Mac, Deskstar P7K500 500GB.
I checked on 2nd Chance PC if it was compatable etc, and this was the reccommendation for the size I wanted.
*For your info my Mac specs are:*
Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac9,1
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
CPU Speed: 1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 600 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.2f1
After installation I wanted to use Disk Utility to format it. It didn't see anything at all.
After an hour or so of PRAM reboots and anything else I could find online it appeared. I formatted it and all seemed well.
However last Monday, whenever I double clicked on the drive it seemed to take awhile before it opened. By yesterday afternoon I was getting the spinning wheel whenever I tried opening it.
So I decided to run Disk Utility on it to see if it needed permissions repaired. It didn't show up there at all. So I restarted and it disappeared from the desktop.
System Profiler saw it, but the text was corrupted, the words were gobbledygook in the drive description. So I figured I'd check with Disk Utility again. Still wasn't there. After rebooting it had completely disappeared from System Profiler all together.
So since Sunday I have been trawling forums and Apple help for suggestions. I've tried most things apart from messing with the Terminal stuff because I figured I'd mess that up LOL.
Are there any tricks you know I can try?
Or should I just send it back to Dabs as a faulty product?
Could it be my Mac? I can't send it to Apple as I bought it from a Apple reseller 2nd hand and didn't buy additional Apple Care.
I have data on it which is unfortunate but not life threatening as it was a new drive I backed up elsewhere also.
Thanks
BigSteve

Hi-
"OEM" would be Original Equipment Manufacturer, which means the drive would have firmware specifically aimed at PC/Windows users.
The description of the drive specifiactions only states "PC" in compatibility, so I would assume the drive to be OEM, though not stated specifically.
The drive should work with the Mac, though it could be a firmware version problem, or, simply a problem with the drive. The Hitachi 7K drives are generally well regarded by Mac users.
In the past, any reported problems were either a firmware problem (typically early release models) or simply a bum drive.
BTW, the Hitachi site states that all their drives have the necessary Mac drivers in the firmware (along with the Windows drivers).
A test, would be to swap the drives in your Mac. Put #1 in #2 bay, and #2 in #1 bay. If the problem with "seeing" the drive stays with a particular bay, the Mac may be at fault. If the drive doesn't show regardless of bay, I would suspect the drive.

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