Test cases within test cases issue : QA Discussion

Good day all,

New to the QA world and I was wondering if I could bounce some thoughts off the community.

We currently are presented with a potential major issue.  Test cases within Test cases.

The issue that if we go with this method, we could be writing test cases in order to write test cases.  For example: Lets say there are 3 test cases. Test Case 3 requires test case 2, and test case 2 requires test case 1. Sounds simple right?

Test case 2 is a form, that can post information for test case 3. 

Now, we start building test case 4. Test case 4 requires test case 2 and test case 2 requires test case 1. But test case 4 requires specific data from test case 2. Since altering test case 2 could effect test case 3, we now have to build test case 5 which is another version of test case 2 in order to build test case 4.


Now image this when there is 1000 test cases. How can one manage that?  How can one know when a pattern is already built and when that pattern can be used... Help !