failed external USB IDE drive as represented in dmesg

Oh boy. It is never good when you see a message like this in dmesg:
scsi 15:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

Here's the whole shebang after plugging in my defunct, broken and otherwise not working NTFS-formatted, Seagate 80GB hard drive that sits in an Adaptec ACS-100 External USB drive case:
usb 5-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 30
usb 5-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi15 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 30
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb 5-3: USB disconnect, address 30
scsi 15:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
usb-storage: device scan complete

So just in case you need to know, this is the type of message you'll get in Fedora if your hard drive crashes.

As comparison, here is the output of dmesg when the drive is successfully recognized by the system:
usb-storage: device found at 32
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 16:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD80 0BB-75CAA0 0811 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
SCSI device sdc: 156250000 512-byte hdwr sectors (80000 MB)
sdc: test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdc: 156250000 512-byte hdwr sectors (80000 MB)
sdc: test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: sdc1
sd 16:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdc
sd 16:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

Boo hoo! I will go home and cry. Wait..I'm already there. I'll start crying now then.