Confused and needing help PLZ

Ok so I have a old FAT model PS2 with OPL on it. I have played the games before here and there I played Armored Core 3 for about 2 hours yesterday but then it froze. Now when I go to OPL it doesn't display any games under HDD games tab... I have tried power cycling the unit, changing the settings from auto detect to manual, I can see the HDD for ulaunch elf, and I deleted the old config files out and let it rebuild new ones. It still doesn't display any games in HDD it asks like its trying to process the HDD the yellow light stays solid but I left it for a good hour and a half and it still displayed nothing. Any suggestions would be welcome.:-pray:

Hook the drive up to a Windows/Linux machine to test for SMART errors ...

If the HDD passes a battery of SMART tests, run WINHIIP (use Wine if your PC is running Linux) and chose the Scan/Repair option.

If the HDD fails any SMART tests ... she's (probably) dead, Jim ... :(