MDL: WD-15EARS 00MWB0 Dying or not compatible with Win7 64bit

I have the same drive, got in Nov. 2010 and it failed July 2011.  I noticed a horid lag before I shut of my computer, came back hours later to find that it was hung on the log-off screen.  Upon doing a hard reset, it took 15 minutes to boot and when logging in, i could not access drives or desktop, only firefox.  Upon removing the drive, the system actually seemed to perform/boot faster.  I do believe this drive was slowly dying and slowing the system down as it happened.