How would that change the formatting? Just curious before i go through all that work...

i'm making an assumption that there is something wrong with the external device and not the hard drive ! it may not work ,but i have seen where it did

Oh ok...I'll try it .. if i can, its not an easy task, there arn't any screws or anything, the last time I tried something similiar to this I ended up not being able to use the external as an external anymore, lol.

no screws ,what is it welded to gethere ,lol
what is the Make and model # of the device ,

I mean the case has no screws. Maxtor - Personal Storage 3200

yes ,i kow what you meant,maybe you should leave it fo a bit and someone who ones one or know what really wrong with it comes along ,is it still under guarantee maybe

I doubt, I don't really even care about the harddrive itself, I just want to get it working well enough to get back some of the lost data. I have a few programs that are good for that Star Pheonix, Active File Recovery (wich can get back data from DOD wipes sometimes), and Ontrack. Then I'll just get a new HDD i need a bigger one anyway.

This is what I sent to SeaGate, maybe they can help me, maybe it will help you help me.....;

I have a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200. About a week ago it just stopped working correctly. When I would plug it into my computer via USB it would say I needed to reformat the HDD. This is no big deal, as I have the software to restore data prior to a reformat. The problem lies in the fact I cannot reformat. I have tired via XP and Vista the following ways.

1) When I plug in the Hard Drive it says "Windows needs to format the disk to use it." I click yes. When I try it this way it will "run" for about 20 minutes and then say "Windows was unable to complete the format."

2) Formatting via Disk Management, this seemed to worked, after about 2 hours it got to 100 percent complete, after that it finally said "Windows could not complete the format." This left the hard drive with a RAW file structure.

3) Formatting with Maxtor MaxBlast, MaxBlast just sits there; I left my computer on overnight. Even then it shows no progress on the progress bar.

I tried to run POWERMAX which is Maxtor's diagnostic tool, but every floppy drive I try to use to create the media with says I need to close the write protection tab, I try closing it, I try opening it, nothing works. So that’s out of the picture.

Since the hard drive is left with a RAW format, I cannot chkdsk. I ran Zero Assumption Recovery but that just lead to an error about the solver head or something that I can't recall. (It literally takes 7 hours to run, and I don't feel like running it again to get the exact error). I have also tried Ontrack and Stellar Phoenix, all they do is help me recover files AFTER I get it formatted correctly, so they are of no use to me.

the problem like i said could be between the computer and the external case ,so removing the hdd from the case and hooking hdd drive directly to a computer maybe be what need to be done to fix problem

How about trying a completely different operating system?
How about a linux Live CD.

Or maybe format the drive via command prompt. Or try Super Fdisk.

- Hope this helps.