Recently this drive suddenly stopped working. It does not make any noises, it shows up correctly in BIOS but not in Windows.
Windows fails to start when the disk is connected. Tried other PC's, same symptoms.
If I connect with a usb interface, it shows up in windows disk management, saying it is not initialized. When I try to initialize it from windows disk management it fails saying there was an I/O error.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This sounds like you have errors on the disks surface. These errors could be the result of degrading recording heads, or maybe even the surface itself.

Assuming there are just a few bad sectors then recovery of the files should be possible. But you should consider the possibility that this is likely a symptom of a more complicated failure with internal compon.

You really need to get a better idea of the problem. you could try to verify the surface with testing tools such as MHDD, or if data is important then you should get a professional evaluation.

thank you hddguy,
forgot to mention that I already did a scan with MHDD.
After a while scanning MHDD reported the rest of the drive with !
(not sure about it though, because I moved on the hdd with the cursor keys)

Check if it shows the correct size of the hard drive.
Check smart values.
If you have no important data try to erase the hdd then normal scan and see if it completes OK.
Otherwise you might be dealing with degraded components like hddguy said

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

BIOS shows correct size.
Guess I'll check SMART status with MHDD.
If erasing the hdd fixes the problem, I should be able to recover most of the data, yes/no ?

Erase the data THEN recover?

No!

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

NO - if you need to recover data then give it to somebody who understands HDD's

Erasing might fix your problem- but data will be lost FOREVER!

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

What happens if you mount the drive in a pc with a Linux os?

I remember I did connect the drive to my bsd box, through a USB adapter.
dmesg showed umass storage device, nothing else.

hdd was sent to the experts.
Will update this thread when I have news from them