Dead hard drive: recussitation options?

[LstBrunnenG]

I have a 40 GB Maxtor EIDE hard drive that is several years old. Just recently it died - it would work at first, but after maybe 3-5 minutes of using it (it could sit for as long as it wanted, I actually had to access files) it would lock up the entire system. I evacuated my data to my other hard drive and put it out of sight and out of mind for a while. There simply wasn't time to mess with it. Now today I went to try and use that hard drive, hoping that formatting it might clear up some of the problems, but it looks to definately be a hardware problem. I'm almost certain it's not under warranty any more. I can't say that there is any noise associated with this problem either - the IDE light will simply light and stay lit. Any suggestions?