The problem with Apple's disk utilities is their lack of any useful feedback to the user, and especially in cases like this. You almost certainly will need to 'take over' the drive with a disk utility that can replace the existing driver (which does all the communication with the world outside the HDD), partition the drive with the five Apple-world partitions needed (only one of which is the 'volume' that mounts on the desktop), install a file system (HFS or HFS+ as you wish), and test the drive's integrity ('self-check'), its internal memory, and its read/write integrity.
Whatever Apple's utilities, designed for a closed world of Apple-approved HDDs with Apple-sanctioned ROMs, may do in this respect, they won't tell you about it. In fact, they will baulk at being asked to tread where another utility has already trodden. Hence the need to 'take over' the drive. If all had been well and sympatico, you would have been invited to initialize the 'unrecognized' drive, and should have done so so that the drive could be mounted.
A more verbose utility, with more get-up-and-go and a GUI worthy of the name, is now your need. One or other out of LaCie's Silverlining, FWB's Hard Disk ToolKit, or InTech's HD SpeedTools. This long after the SCSI heyday for personal computers, that is getting to be difficult. SpeedTools is a commercial utility, costing about USD60 for pre-OS X systems. FWB appears to have melted into the mist. LaCie's Silverlining came free with LaCie's hardware, although (the latest) version 6.5.8 is still downloadable from them. A further consideration is matching your Mac's System or OS with the utility's version. Version 6.2.1 is what I use for 040-processor Macs, and even then it has superfluous features such as USB/FireWire support.
There is a ray of hope, nonetheless. Download
Mt. Everything. If that can mount your drive, even if you have to use ME's driver, you may then be able to format the drive with Apple's utilities. If not, your drive may be in a state that one of the more verbose GUIs would classify as 'parked', or 'not ready' (=NBG). Even then, a glimmer remains. Silverlining 5.8.x (and other utilities) can be
downloaded. This version of Silverlining is so close to the hardware that you can see the 8 bits reflected in its eyes. It can still produce interleave factors of 1:3 and 1:2 (but that is another story). With it you can also annihilate all previous formatting, impose your choice of volume size, get the obligatory Apple partions, map out bad blocks, &c., &c. Its GUI is rudimentary, however, so tread carefully, or else download Silverlining Lite also, to stand between you and Silverlining 5.8.x and talk comprehensibly to you.
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