Is my external hardrive broken?

This morning I plugged it into my laptop and the laptop recognised it. As soon as I started moving files from the laptop to the hard drive, the hard drive startijng a beeping, whirling noise and nothing will download. Indeed the laptop fails to recognise the hard drive now. I have tried plugging it into my PC, but again the PC refuses tyo acknowledge the prescence of the external hard drive. Any idea of what to do? If it is broken, can the data already on the external hard drive be recovered?