Is my external HDD done for?

[Hawq]

Rather a leading topic I know

So earlier I was greeted by the PC not seeing the external HDD even after unpluging & pluging it back in a few times and upon trying to use the disk management tools I was given the error
'the semaphore timeout period has expired'
according to my mate this may mean the things on its last legs, its only about a couple of years old at most, so its pretty damn quick if so.

The really confusing bit is as I was preparing to take the drive out & try it just as a regular drive I pluged it into my USB hub & it seemed happy, now I've got it back plugged strait into my PC & its working for now & its making normal sounding noises as it runs. So while my mate works with sorting computers I figure why not see if I can get a second opinion (or third, fourth, however many really) as getting a new HDD isnt something I'd planned on having to budget for yet

[Roofus]

I'd back it up now just to be safe. Once you get a good backup, go ahead and keep using it until it fails. Just be aware.

[ian]

Play it safe and assume it's about to die.
or you'll end up with 1.5TB of data on a drive you can never get back when there's a head crash!

I've recently put EVERYTHING off external drives into my 2 computers. I just hope neither one dies before I have it all sorted, or I'm screwed.

Don't do what Ian does!