HDD Trying to Format - Recovery Programs not working

[HiXael]

I've tried two recommended programs so far: Get Data Back and Recuva

Whenever either of these programs attempted to locate the harddrive, the entire program froze up. This harddrive is poison to my computer. It's external, I think 250GB (its my moms and she's messed it up this way multiple times before but my bf has always fixed it - now he's in another state ATM). It has tons of photos on it I'd like to recover, or at least fix the drive.

When I plug it in, my computer really has a hell of a time - programs won't open, everything takes like 2 minutes to open and load...
Even takes about 3-5min for the harddrive to show up and register completely on my computer. Once it works, I can try to get into it and it'll ask me if I want to format it. I hit cancel and it tries to open the drive but will hang for about 5-10min before eventually crashing finally.

I'm a dimwitt when it comes to computers, but I tried looking up online what to do and tried out these programs and I can't get farther than detecting the harddrive. I'm at a loss of what to do other than pay for someone else to do it, but I'm trying to avoid costly measures, so any advice is appreciated.

 

[OhSnapWord]

You could try removing the drive from its enclosure and using it internally. Sometimes the USB to SATA bridge starts failing and causing some weird issues, but this is pretty rare.

 

[HiXael]

You could try removing the drive from its enclosure and using it internally. Sometimes the USB to SATA bridge starts failing and causing some weird issues, but this is pretty rare.

I will talk to my mom and see if she wants to give that a try.
Do I chance destroying it if I'm not careful in removing it from the case and adding it into my pc? I've never done this before, nor did I know you could do this with the externals.

 

[OhSnapWord]

If you're not careful, you could damage it.