External Maxtor not readable anymore

While trying to access folders on my external Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini (320 GB), folders started disappearing when I clicked on them.The disk would not eject, and after restarting my MBP the disk became "unreadable".
I can see it in Disk Utility, (though it magically shows as a 2 TB disk now), but I'm not allowed to click on any of the repair options...
I tried Data Rescue (which indicated that it would take 20145.5 hours to scan the disk) with no result, DiskWarrior turned out being more of a coward... (it wouldn't even see the disk) while Disk Genius just impressed me with its spectacular visual effects but did absolutely nothing to help with my situation... I spent hours and hours trying to find something online but the very few people who managed to save something were so happy for making it, that they wouldn't even bother to elaborate on how they made it.
I have all my photographic and graphic design work of the 3 past months on this disk, if anyone can help me in any way to save some of the data, I would be eternally grateful.
Also if anyone knows how I can force-mount this disk PLEASE, pretty pretty please, tell me how....
Thanks in advance!

memos wrote:
Let me clarify that this is an external USB Storage Disk.
I tried everything, booting from the OS X installation disk, using DiskWarrior, Techtool Pro, etc. but the disk was not there... the only thing that found the disk was DU which said that S.M.A.R.T status is not available for this drive...
Again, if anyone has a way of force-mounting a drive please let me know...
Have you ever used this external drive on a PC? That has been known to corrupt things.
Is the drive powered from the computer? This is never recommended.
Does the drive have a FireWire connection?
You might see if you can access the drive in a terminal
In a terminal, with the drive connected, enter the following two commands:
cd /Volumes
ls
You will see a list of available HDs. If you see your external drive listed, if the name is External for example, then enter the following command
cd External
and you should be inside the drive.
now enter
ls
and you should see the file system.
If you cannot see the drive this way, then download and burn to CD the Ubuntu Live CD OS from
Ubuntu.com
Boot into the Ubuntu CD by holding down "C" on boot, with CD inserted and then see if you can see the external drive.
I would add that you should get rid of the Maxtor ASAP and only use FireWire connections in the future. USB is really for keyboards and mice, etc. Many have found it to be unreliable for other devices.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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