External hard drive issues

Ok Ill try to be as detailed as possible. My external is a usb 2.0 thats powered by the USB (so no need to plug it into a power outlet). Its formatted to FAT32 (the only format the peripheral I mainly use it for will recognize) Its about 8 months old and has been working fine up until a few hours ago.

So now onto the problem Two nights ago I had it plugged into my PS3 watching movies off of it and it functioned normally... today I converted a movie on my pc to a file format that is SUPPOSED to be recognized by a ps3 (using WinX). After converting I tested the file while still on my PC with VLC player (the player that usually plays any and everything) but it only played sound and no video... but I copied the file to my external anyway guessing the PS# would have different results. SO with the file on my HDD I plug it into my PS3 and try to play it and get a message saying file or data not supported or unrecognized (whereas usually if you have files on a device the ps3 doesnt recognize it just wont show up at all when youre browsing the files that are on the HDD) so I delete that file from my HDD using tje PS3 right then and there.

Now hours later while trying to watch stuff on the drive (stuff that i KNOW works on my ps3) when I plug the HDD into the ps3 the HDD power light comes on just fine and you can hear it spinning. However when I try to play a file the HDD shutdown down (the light just goes off as if it was unplugged) and immediately restarts.. sometimes it wont let me get as far as selecting a movie file to play.. the hard drive will just shut down as soon as I start "exploring" the HDD before the folders even load up on the screen. I thought maybe my hard drive is finally dying (i hope not) so I hook it to a PC and it SEEMS to work fine (though I dont think 5 mins is long enough to test thoroughly) but I can access movies on it on the pc and it doesnt shut down when I explore the drive and browse folders on the pc)

Also on the ps3 when I plug the hard drive in as long as im not trying to access it the power light stays on just fine and the ps3 detects the hard drive the entire time.. the turning on and off only happens when I try to access the HDD. so I hook it back up to a pc and use check disk (didnt click on any of the check boxes) and it completed in seconds and didnt mention it had found anything.

Also when I try to copy small files to and from the PS# to my hdd (small being 4mb or less) it works just fine) but when I tried to copy a 800mb file from the HDD to the ps3 it got to 4-7% before the hdd shutdown/restarted again.... i tried it a second time later and it copied the file with no problems)


is my hard drive finally on its last legs? is there a pc program I can use to check it thoroughly that can/will tell me if something actually Is wrong with the hard drive? (i.e thus I can determine if it actually IS the hdd or is it just having an issue communicating with the PS3)?