Problems recognising/formatting HHD

Hey all.
I have a Seagate 300GB SATA2 drive. Guy who gave it to me reckonned it came out of his SkyHD box, allthough who knows...

Connected via a USB kit I have (enclosure without the box), if it makes any differnce.

Windows lists the drive in Disk Management, but just has it as "unknown" and prompts me to "initialise" it. Two options; MBR and GPT, neither work, throwing up "Device is not ready" error. Can't format it.

GParted (from a Ubuntu liveCD) doesnt find it at all. Ubuntu knows it theres like Windows, but again just lists everything as unknown. When I try to mount it, get an "unknown mount point" error.

Is it borked? Any third party apps worth trying (assuming it is formatted in some weird filesystem or corrupted to hell)? Last I knew Sky drives were formatted as FAT32?

Thanks in advance!

Have you plugged it directly into your mobo and retried formatting it?

Does it appaer with a drive designator in either Ubuntu (eg /dev/sda)? If so you should be able to see it in Gparted. If not then you could follow Mac124's suggestion.

/feels very stupid

Plugged it in internally, recognised and formatted under Vista fine.. Guess my external USB thingey is buggered :( (works fine with an optical drive on the netbook tho)

Probably will be ok in the USB caddy now it has been formatted "properly". I have had to do that on a few occasions, no idea why though.

Yeah, will whack it out later and see, very strange. It was out of a SkyHD box afterall btw.. Formatted to FAT32 and full of crazy files and folders.. Wonder if that was the problem on USB. Windows wouldnt normally let you format anything that big to FAT32? Wouldnt explain why Ubuntu/GParted refused to play along tho.. Like you said, crazy!

Sorted anwho, thanks again :D