I’ve had a 750gb Western Digital external HD for nearly 4 months. I’ve only used this drive for housing photographs for my business. Currently, there are approx. 60 GB of photos on the drive.

A week ago, I noticed that the drive didn’t seem to be functioning properly. It was really slow (more than normal) and sometimes would freeze up.

I tried to get a particular photograph off of the drive yesterday and it was a complete failure. I have approx. 35 different folders of photographs (each for a different client) on the drive. When I open the folders, 1 of 3 things happen:

-Everything is completely normal. Some of the folders are totally fine.
-I can see all of the photographs as thumbnails, but when I try to open them, they freeze. I can’t even copy them to my desktop.
-Some of the folders will open and half of the thumbnails will show up as the actual photographs and half will constantly remain the default blue sky.

Needless to say, I’m a little panicked. There has been no physical damage to the drive. I’m not really sure what changed.

After doing my homework, I downloaded the drive diagnostic software from WD. These tests "failed" claiming that there were "too many damaged sectors." If I restart my computer with the drive attached, it attemps a chkdsk but freezes up halfway through.

Now, I’m manually checking the disk. Though, it has been going for nearly 20 minutes and I can really tell if anything is happening.

Of course, my main concern is getting these photographs off of the drive. It is especially frustrating when I can see them as thumbnails but not access the actual files.

What can/should I do? I really appreciate the help.
Nope. Completely quiet.