Ext Hard Drive Problem

[KurtangleTN]

Recently this external hard drive I have spun down right in the middle of a Time Machine backup. It ended up freezing my Mac for a second so I turned it off only to have it come up saying it was corrupt and needed a format. I did that and it seemed to work fine only to see it would never eject (it had nothing on it but it claimed programs were using it) so I was forced again to shut it off without ejecting.

This time I turned it back on and it didn't (and still doesn't) appear for about 15 mins.. now SL says "Can't be read" and when I go to disk utility it just shows the drive (no volumes, everything like partioning and erasing is all greyed out)

Is the drive dead or is there hope?

 

[quantum003]

If the drive isn't making audible noises while running I would think it's still savable. Have you considered more intensive hardware testing utilities like Disk Warrior or Tech Tool? The fact that it does appear in Disk Utility is a good sign I think. Disk Warrior in particular would be able to rebuild the file directory on the drive, and that may solve your problem.