Is my hard drive dead?

[upaymeifixit]

About four to five years ago I bought a 500GB Western Digital MyBook Essential external hard drive. I've used it mostly for backups and storing a few large files. I stopped using it for about a month and then plugged it back in yesterday. It kept connecting for about two seconds, then disconnecting for five, never mounting any of the three volumes. I took the hard drive out of the external enclosure and put it directly in my computer. Just in case it helps, this is all it shows in System Profiler right now:

• Intel 5 Series Chipset
  • 
    WDC WD5000AAKS-00YGA0:
    • 
      Model: WDC WD5000AAKS-00YGA0
      Revision: 12.01C02
      Serial Number: WD-WCAS80207874
      Native Command Queuing: Yes
      Queue Depth: 32
      Detachable Drive: No
      Medium Type: Rotational

I've been pretty lucky, I've never had a hard drive die on me. So I wasn't sure if any of this meant it was dead. It also seemed an odd time to die, right as I plugged it in after not being used. Just looking for someone else's opinion.

Thanks.

 

[upaymeifixit]

I just opened the hard drive up then closed it. When I plugged it in I could see it in disk utility as an unformatted disk. I tried formatting it and after about five minutes trying to unmount the disk it gave me this error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory

I will look at it in Windows and Linux.