Hdd ready to die?

Alright I've gotten the 1720 imminent hard drive failure error It happend sometime after I went out driving I left my computer on because I was sending my friend something through msn and I said hey it was only going to be an hour so it should be fine. I come back home to find my computer monitor was on and it was black and a green flashing light by the computers power button. I turn it off, because I thought it was my graphics card messing up again and then I get the 1720 imminent hard drive failure error now I thought wiping the whole drive would help I foresaw my hard drive biting the dust before because 3 times its managed to screw up and I had to lose all my info on it. anyways after wiping it clean or so I think, I was able to install xp pro on it once more now I have a friend that has told me that I can reformat the drive completely and start it up and it should be fine (he says he has gotten the error before and thats what he did to solve the problem) but I'm not sure but is there a way of restoring it to its normal state if I have to go and buy another hdd I will but I kinda don't want to go through the hassle.
oh and its been running for about 9 hours + because I'm dling ydl for my ps3 but if its not possible anyone have a rough estimate on how long it can hold out before dieing.

 

No one here can predict how long it will last. Best thing that you can do is grab the drive makers utility and test it that way, you can also reset it to factory conditions.