thank you... but that script only sees drives already connected to the operating system... it doesn't rescan the scsi bus as you're creating additional physicaldrives... which is what i'm doing. i finally figured out how to send commands to microsoft diskpart and capture the response so i thought i'd post the final script for future reference. please keep in mind i'm a novice... so try not to laugh too hard at my syntax. i'd be very interested if anyone wants to critique my code and provide feedback.

#!c:/Perl/bin/perl.exe -w

use strict ;
use warnings ;
use English ;

&send_diskpart_command ("rescan");
&send_diskpart_command ("list disk");

sub send_diskpart_command
{
my $debug = 0;

          my ($diskpart_command) = @_;
          if ($diskpart_command eq "")
             {
             print "\n***No command passed to the send_diskpart_comman
+d subroutine***\n" ;
             return ;
             }

# diskpart.exe requires a textfile input
# deleting the textfile if it already exists then creating a new textf
+ile with the diskpart_command

          my $file = "diskpart_cmd.txt";

          if ($debug)
             {
             print "\nSearching for an existing copy of the text file 
+$file.";
             if (unlink($file) == 1)
                {
                print "\nThe file '$file' was found and deleted.";
                }
           else {
                print "\nThe file '$file' was not detected.";
                }
             }

          open (DPART, ">>$file") || die ("Could not open file. $!");
          print DPART ($diskpart_command);
      if ( $debug ) { print "\nCreated file '$file'." ; }
          close (DPART);

      if ( $debug ) { print "\n\nSending $diskpart_command." ; }
      open ( FH , "diskpart /s diskpart_cmd.txt|" ) || die ("Could not
+ open file. $!");
      print "\nCommand '$diskpart_command' sent to the host.\n";
          if ( $debug ) { print "\n"; }
          my @inFile = <FH> ; # read all at once into array
          foreach (@inFile)
          {
          if ( $debug ) { print $_."\t"; }
          }
          close (FH);

          if ($debug) # delete the textfile
             {
             if (unlink($file) == 1)
                {
                print "\n\nThe file '$file' was deleted successfully.\
+n";
                }
           else {
                print "\n\nThe file '$file' was not deleted.\n";
                }
             }
}
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