AS Miden said, a tool that allows you to see the drive inside a regular PC (taking USB out of the equation) is what you should try. They are called IDE 2.5 to 3.5 converters. Search ebay for
"2.5 to 3.5 ide" and you'll see little circuit boards with 2.5in connector for your drive on one side and 3.5 for the computer internal cable on the other. They're only a couple bucks.
unplug your pc's cd rom or something and plug it into this adapter connected to your drive.
now lets see if your BIOS recognizes it, and even better if windows recognizes it. If BIOS does not see it on startup then the drive is shot, if bios recognizes it but windows does not, right click my computer and click manage.....then go to disk management. do you see it there? if yes you can click on it, and activate it and format it.....if not, thne you need to use a 3rd party disk rebuilder like spinrite (
www.grc.com) to repair the drive. that kind of software is about $80 though, so what is the drive worth?
You can always send to cass, and i will rebuild the drive and ship it back.
-cass' son.
I don't check this forum, my dad told me to.....you can email me at chrispawlowski at comcast dot net for more questions
little hint.......if your bios does not recognize it, before you throw it away.....put it in the freezer for about 3hrs, then try again.....it works.....Ive saved many drives by freezing them