Windows was unable to complete the format. Help!

I have a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200. About a week ago it just stopped working correctly. When I would plug it into my computer via USB it would say I needed to reformat the HDD. This is no big deal, as I have the software to restore data prior to a reformat. The problem lies in the fact I cannot reformat. I have tired via XP and Vista the following ways.

1) When I plug in the Hard Drive it says "Windows needs to format the disk to use it." I click yes. When I try it this way it will "run" for about 20 minutes and then say "Windows was unable to complete the format."

2) Formatting via Disk Management, this seemed to worked, after about 2 hours it got to 100 percent complete, after that it finally said "Windows could not complete the format." This left the hard drive with a RAW file structure.

3) Formatting with Maxtor MaxBlast, MaxBlast just sits there; I left my computer on overnight. Even then it shows no progress on the progress bar.

I tried to run POWERMAX which is Maxtor's diagnostic tool, but every floppy drive I try to use to create the media with says I need to close the write protection tab, I try closing it, I try opening it, nothing works. So that’s out of the picture.

Since the hard drive is left with a RAW format, I cannot chkdsk. I ran Zero Assumption Recovery but that just lead to an error about the solver head or something that I can't recall. (It literally takes 7 hours to run, and I don't feel like running it again to get the exact error). I have also tried Ontrack and Stellar Phoenix, all they do is help me recover files AFTER I get it formatted correctly, so they are of no use to me.

I just need to get the HDD formatted, so I can someone use it to get my files back. What can I do?

Thanks.

So you think taking it into a computer repair shop might be a waste of money? You know how they charge that 30 dollar diagnostic crap.

Just scrap it and get a new one?

Really sucks I had a lot of important files on that HDD, and acutally I was in the process of backing some of them up.