Is My External Drive dying?

So I keep a bunch of video files on my external drive, but recently I've been having some issues.  I've tried copying/moving various files to my internal drive, and the process usually quits halfway through, with an error about "couldn't be read from or written to."  It is usually either error -36 or -50.  After this occurs, I have to force eject the drive.  Actually, every time I use the drive, I've had to force eject it.  I've run Disk Utility multiple times, and I can only verify the disk and repair the disk.  Sometimes (about 3 or 4) I've had 0 problems.  Once, it did return an error that was unfixable.  Is there a way to fix this?  Help!

Hard drives fail. That is a fact of spinning HDD. Depending on the age and how much it has been used the drive itself may be failing. Replace it before trying to use it again. Copy only one file off it at a time then let it site to cool before transfering another file off it.
If this in one of the USB powered drive it could be the system is failing to supply enough power to it for the extended period of time it is taking to copy the files. you could tryb a Y USB cable to connec it to both USB ports at the same time to supply more power to it.

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