External Hard Drive - Input/Output Error - ??

Hi everyone, i just bought a macbook pro, last apple i owned was a performa back in the day

anyway, i have an external hard drive that i have been using with a windows based pc, i plugged it into my mac and tried to put files in the hd, but it wouldn't work so i attempted to format it using disc utility and it went all the way and then it failed

now my hard drive wont open on my pc, and when i plug it in and turn it on, it shows a, initialize, erase, or ignore screen and when i try to do anything with it, it states, a input/output error and i can't do anything with it

will someone please help me out here and tell me how i can format this drive accordingly and will be able to place any files that i would like to in it

Much appreciated!

This exact thing happened to me too, except it was with brand new drives. I went through 3 drives with my MBP with the same exact message. I brought it to the Apple store and showed them what was going on, and they said that my Mac's firewire port fried the external's port, and it killed the drive altogether, i went through 3 drives with it doing the same thing. They said MBPs have a reputation for overloading both firewire and USB ports of other external drives. Can your PC recognize it at all?

My PC didn't recognize it at all, so i found the box of the hard drive (i dunno why i still had it) and there was a firewire cable provided so i tried the FW cable with the MBP and sure enough i was able to format it without any problems

Then i opened it up with my PC as well - after i formatted it i plugged the USB cable back in and it worked as well - it was the cable after all that time, i dunno why, but the USB cable didn't work, yet the FW cable did, now the USB cable does work... i don't get it, but at least it works