Hard disk not mounting

If you've read my other post you will know that i am not currently in the best of luck...

I am having keyboard issues and have therefore had to reset my Macbook with the 8sec power button (which works even when the rest of the board doesnt) trick

When I switched back on nothing happens for about 3 minutes, then the folder with a ? appears in it.

Ive tried the following to fix the drive

- Reset the PRAM
- Tried the option key at startup to load into leopard install
- Tried the c key at start up
- Tried to boot into single user mode to fdsk
- Put the drive in an external case: not showing up on any computer/disk utility

- Firewire target disk mode: The drive doesnt show on the on any computer/ disk utility BUT system profiler does detect firewire target disk, type AAPL which is I assume is referring to the harddrive (good sign that it can see that i guess) but doesnt give size etc

Basically none of the commands on start up seem to do anything except for target disk mode (which takes a few minutes to get into) and resetting the pram which doesnt do anything. Ive removed the harddrive, booted into the leopard installer and its disk utility then slotted the harddrive back in but that doesnt work either. Ive tried various apps such as diskwarrior with no luck either

I know that its most likely the boot sector of the drive thats screwed, meaning that most of my data is probably ok

Any more ideas? Im sure someone will be giving me the "you should have backed up" lecture - im an idiot for this i know, but I am going to buy a backup drive now no matter what happens now. I would just really like to get this data back!!

Same thing happened to me

I did all the things you did, although not really sure that is what they were called. took it into the Apple store and they verified that my hard disk was done for and needed replacing. I too, would like my data back. They could not say whether or not that was possible. You need to see a specialist. Bummer, I did not have back ups either.

Somehwere I read that the Seagate drives were failing. I am wondering what brand of drive to get. I want to make sure it is compatible with the plugs, etc in the macbook.