digitalfreaknyc said:
So now it's off to data recovery. I got a quote of $590 for everything...if I decide to go with it. :( This was the explanation of what they think happened:

Your hard drive most likely has firmware corruption. Typically the drive spins up fine, doesn't click but never show up in the system or shows up with 0 capacity. It's a very common problem with Seagate's new 7200.11 family - we receive several requests a week with this issue. Data recovery in such case requires use of specialized equipment and experience to access firmware on the platters and repair corrupted modules.

Condolances, and best of luck.

I'm with that Paypal idea.

I hope that family doesn't include any of my models. I haven't yet bought enough drives to back up all my drives. I've researched how to deal with a lot of drive issues (a drive I couldn't afford to fix), but the platter's firmware is definatelly not DIY.