My Passport Essential 1 tb external drive not responding

I have a 3-month old 1 tb hard drive that I have been having intermittent trouble and wondering if it’s on its way out.  OS is Windows Server 2003.  I try to access the drive through Windows Explorer and it doesn’t respond.  When I hover my mouse over the SmartWare icon in the system tray, it says 0% used even though the drive is about half full.  If I tinker around with the drive, I can eventually get to the files through Windows Explorer.  This morning, I went to retrieve last night’s backup.  I could see the backup on the drive, but it was running so slowly, I decided to reboot the machine.  After it booted back up, the backup file was gone!  This is the 2nd time that has happened - the 1st time, I thought I was seeing things, but now I know it’s the drive.  Has anyone else experienced problems like this and what is the resolution - send the drive back for a replacement?

Hi my name is Alan Hargrave and I just want to know if there is way of getting my USB External Jump Drive to work again.

And if you can help me get my device working once again.  So please help me get it working again.

Thank You!!