Time Machine drive can't be read, but also cannot be reformatted - fixes?

Question

Hello!
I have a 500 GB Maxtor hard drive which I use with my MacBook Pro for a Time Machine volume. Last night, it had no problem - it could be read, and time machine backed up properly. Today? Nothing. I looked in Disk Utility, only to find that while the drive is listed in the source panel, it has no partitions. I clicked on "Erase", and everything was grayed out. I clicked on "Partition", and it says that the disk is too small to hold partitions.
Disk utility, on my G4 running Tiger, shows the drive with a blank, 2-Terabyte partition - yet it's only 500 GB. I can have finder copy files to and from the disc, and it seems to function normally - it just won't show up on any other machine. I also can't get Disk utility to partition it correctly.
There was no unusual noise last night, no extra heat or vibration, or any other outward sign of a hardware failure. That doesn't completely rule it out, I suppose, but it limits the possibilities somewhat. Considering how the G4 can at least copy files to and from it, it does not seem to have failed completely.
Does this signify a hardware failure with the HDD, or a directory problem? Is there some way I can reformat it via Console that might work better?
-Dan

Answer 1

Does this signify a hardware failure with the HDD,
it would seem so.
or a directory problem? Is there some way I can reformat it via Console that might work better?
no. if you can't do it from disk utility, you can't do it from a mac, period. while the problem is likely that the drive is failing you can try reformatting it from a different OS like windows or Linux. you can make an Ubuntu CD
http://www.ubuntu.com/
then boot from the CD and try formatting it from there.
-Dan