Diskwarrior 4.2 Directory rebuild

Howdy folks.

My son's WD 500gb external HD took a dump. I began using Diskwarrior 4.2 on Monday morning. It is still at 'step 5' 2 1/2 days later. The following message is displayed:
Speed reduced by disc malfunction: 11,494
I know the represents the errors it has found. The cursor still moves and that count increases every few minutes, so I know Diskwarrior is working.

The system log's latest entry is: Feb 10 14:26:10 (my name)-powerbook-g4-17 [0x0-0x46046].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[396]: DiskWarrior App: disk2s3: Read I/O error for block range 116706 to 116706

That count increases too. Shall I let Diskwarrior continue and for low long? Please advise if you've had experience with this app.

I am running os x 10.5.8

Thanks!

Looks like the drive has failed. Try booting from your system disk and running Repair Disk and see what is reported. Not even DW can bring 'em back from the dead sdadly.

I'll give it a try. Thanks.

Here is the message:
Verifying volume "disk2s3"
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Invalid B-tree node size
Volume check failed
Error: File system verify or repair failed

Can Diskwarrior help or am I wasting my time?

You need a new HDD and trust you had all your work backed up?