I have a Maxtor OneTouch 4 which has crashed. The drive still runs but when I test it, it fails on the long and short reporting bad sectors.

I am trying to figure out it the Maxtor software maybe messed up and not allowing the drive to be mounted. It keeps saying It cannot recognizes the Partition do you wanted to create a partition and format the drive.

I look in windows admin. tools It show an disk error starting on 2/8/2012 The device has a bad block of memory, which Windows attempted to read. The data might be missing or corrupted.

Seatools is reporting

Bad LBA: 249 Not Repaired
Long Generic - FAIL 2/11/2012 7:50:15 PM
SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4
Short Generic - Started 2/11/2012 8:24:57 PM
Short Generic - FAIL 2/11/2012 8:25:04 PM
SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4
Short Generic - Started 2/12/2012 10:43:53 AM
Short Generic - FAIL 2/12/2012 10:44:00 AM
SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4
Long Generic - Started 2/12/2012 10:44:09 AM

My question is is there any hope of recovering my files from this drive and if so, how can I do it.

I also read that some people have taking apart the drive and replaced the SATA cable which allow the drive to work again. Do you think this could be the problem in this case.

I recommend purchasing an external HD drive kit (I like Newtech.com USB 3.0 kit). I've found that the electronics in the external drive cases fail first. Just remove the drive, attach it to the kit, and try from a Windows machine.

You can also use Easeus Partition Recovery (free download) to recover lost partitions, and they also have good data recovery software tools.

If all else fails, if you have a spare hard drive, you can use the CopyWipe tool to copy the drive sector by sector; I recommend using the option to copy backwards (start from the inside of the platters) as the first/outside track of the platters have the most problems.

If you really, really need the data and still have no luck, try a professional recovery service, but the charge anywhere from $200-$1800.