Possible near death HDD?

Well, the Cavier HDD in my sig is acting funny. Last night I loaded about 30 gigs of data to it, not that much (its still over 60 percent free). So today I turned on my computer and was using files on it, and all of a sudden it made Windows Explorer stop responding. I thought that was wierd, and had to restart the computer. Well when it started back up the hard drive was working fine, mind you it hasn't been making any noises or anything like a normal HDD that is dieing would. I opened my computer about 30 minutes later noticed that that disk wasn't showing up. I restarted the computer, and the drive was working again, but then about 10 minutes later it just "shut off", if doesn't actually shutoff I can hear it running, but it just stops working with Windows. I read a chkdsk but it said there were no errors at all. I tried to defragment but it doesn't stay on long enough to finish. So do you guys this it's dieing? If so I'll buy a new one tonight.

After POST I got a message that said SEC Master Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T. status BAD, Backup and Replace.

Then it did a consistency CHKDSK and said
0 Bad File Records
0 EA Records
0 Reparse Records
0 Unindexed
Then it got to stage 3 of 3 Security descriptor verifcation comlplete, and I let it seit for 10 minutes and froze.

I got everything backed up from it, finally. While backing it up I get error messages all throughout from WIndows saying something about a Bad Disk please backup and contanct the manufacturer to see if you need a replacement or repair.

I figured now that I have it backed up I would re-format it, hoping that would fix something. But when I go to disk managment it freezes when loading virtual space. I also can't defragment it becuase it will "shut off".

Doing either of those in Safe Mode wields the same results.

Check for loose or damaged cables.

For $30 US I can promise you a nice service, nothing gody just your closet friends and one polebearer. Looks like Evonguggs first suggestion is the right one, manufacturers hard disk diagnostics and WD is good about that. You may be able to map out the bad sectors and revive the bulk of the drive, better yet is it under warranty.