WD External Hard Drive will not format, "Input/Output Error"

Trying to reformat an old Western Digital external drive, immediate error in Disk Utility "Input/Output Error". Switched USB cords/ports, nothing. Just getting a second opinion before I trash it.
I know I can probably take out the drive and put it in an external case, but this was just going to be an extra drive for a friend, not worth the $20 for the case.
Thanks

I'm getting the same errors from both my USB ports when I try to format a brand new Maxtor 1TB drive.
I had noticed some strange errors a week ago when Time Machine was reporting an error saying it had failed (this was using a nother external firewire drive). Errors were (not verbatim) "error writing files" & "unknown error".
I naturally thought there was a prob with the ext drive, so knowing that I had at least a good full back-up on there, bought a new ext drive (larger) to perform a full backup on so I could reformat the firewire drive and utilise it elsewhere - but got errors when I tried to set it up as a Time Machine drive seconds after I took it out of the box.
I ran "Verify Disk" on my internal macbook HD and it reported some permission errors and mis-reported file sizes and told me to "Repair Disk". I did, and this stated it fixed a few things. Ran Verify again and it still reported some permission errors.
Now, this leaves me in a sticky spot. I can't format the maxtor external disk in order to manually copy over my disk content, it doesn't even show up in disk Utility or in Finder. I can't perform a Time Machine backup - as it can't see the maxtor disk. I can't do a TM backup on the old Firewire disk - due to the program errors. AND it appears I have permission errors on my internal HD.
Whatever course of action I take to correct these problems - I would like the knowledge that I have a full backup to restore from if things "head south" while I look to correct the HD permission issues.
Anyone out there with some REAL SMART ideas that can help me out here ?
Right now I'll even accept "Half Smart", "Clever" and "**** - Why Didn't I Think Of That" answers !
S.

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