External Hard Drive Failure. Odd behaviour from DiskUtility.

Hi.

Yesterday, out of nowhere, my 2tb Western Digital HD failed. It had about 500GB of data on it, mostly music and television shows. I have, on occasion, knocked the USB out when it has been in use, but this didn't happen before it stopped working.

Anyway, when I start up my macbook pro running Snow Leopard I get

The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.

with Ignore and Eject options.

If I click either one, the same thing happens. The disk doesn't show up in Finder, but in DiskUtility it is there named 2.2TB WD Ext HDD 1021 Media. I did give it its own name. All the options except Info, Burn, Eject and New Image are greyed out on all the tabs. It wont let me repair or anything like that. If I click eject, everything greys out like it's attempting to eject and then it just stays there.

I've looked all over the internet and tried the terminal commands that are generally recommended. Here's a transcript:

Last login: Sat Apr 20 20:19:59 on ttys000
Bearsticks-MacBook-Pro:~ Bearsticks$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Oak 319.7 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: *2.2 TB disk1
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *4.3 GB disk2
1: Apple_partition_map 30.7 KB disk2s1
2: Apple_Driver_ATAPI 2.0 KB disk2s2
3: Apple_HFS Drive Genius 3 4.3 GB disk2s3
Bearsticks-MacBook-Pro:~ Bearsticks$ diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1
NOTE: repairDisk is deprecated, use repairVolume instead.
Error starting filesystem repair for disk1: Unrecognized filesystem (-9958)
Bearsticks-MacBook-Pro:~ Bearsticks$ diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk1
Error starting filesystem repair for disk1: Unrecognized filesystem (-9958)

Click to expand...

As you can see, it's showing that the external HD is there, but it can't seem to get in to it to do anything with it or even recognise its 'name'. I'm guessing it's corrupted or the drive is actually failing. I'm almost ready to put it in the freezer.

Edit: Forgot to mention that DiskWarrior doesn't seem to recognise the drive.

Edit 2: I plugged the hard drive in to a Windows PC that I have never used it with before. The PC installed some driver software for the drive but after that the PC wouldn't recognise the drive.

Forgot to mention that DiskWarrior doesn't seem to recognise the drive.

Click to expand...

When Disk Warrior can't "see" or recognize the drive, you can bet it's defective. Time to give Western Digital a call and ask for a RMA. (assuming the drive is still under warranty)

If the data on the drive is critical, you might try downloading a trial copy of "Scannerz" to see if it can recover some of the data.

Scannerz doesn't seem to work. I click scan and nothing happens.

Data Rescue 3 recognises the drive, attempts to scan and then gives up.

Disk Drill has got me the furthest so far. It has told me that the drive has a few bad sectors, is possibly physically damaged and it's in the process of scanning for recoverable files at the moment.

I'm pretty sure it's a loss. There's some important stuff on there that'll make my life a lot easier if I get it back but there's nothing that I can't live without.