External Hard Drive HELP!

Hey guys I'm new here and in need of some desperate help!

Basically I've had this old laCie external hard drive laying around for a while now so i decided to try rummage through the files to see if I had any important documents before taking it apart to put in my new computer and another internal hard drive..
But the problem I am having is that I found some family photos on there which is also pretty stupid the only place I think I saved these photos was on this hard drive..

When i first plugged this external hard drive into my iMac 27" it registered as a normal external hard drive but it just wouldn't index my hard drive which I didn't notice until I tried copying the photos from the hard drive to my computer which it just wouldn't allow me to and it would just crash..
(I also tried using data recovery tools but they all wanted me to pay and I really don't have the money to do that atm..)

So I decided then to unscrew it take the hard drive and put it in my new PC so I can just get a third party software to open the hard drive and copy out the necessary files... but then it got more annoying because my hard drive randomly started powering off whenever I tried to make a transfer between the external hard drive and my PC.. what was odd was that I was able to throw a picture into the external hard drive from my desktop and it would work fine.. I can also move this album into another folder in the external hard drive.. Since then i put the external hard drive back in its case and it is still being identified but I just want a way to copy the files over so I can format the hard drive..
I am willing to open up the case and put it back into my PC if needed, I will be willing to do anything except something that includes spending money but please do still mention any tips you do have even though they do include spending money..

Thank you so much in advance for your help!

Awww come on guys it's been forever and still no reply.. I'm stumped with what to do... Literally any help will be wonderful! PLEASE HELP!

barkmonster said:

It sounds like one of 2 things.

1. the permissions on the drive are messed up.

Post a screenshot of the "get info" from in the finder. (The bottom of the get info window).

If there's any permissions problems, it might show as "custom" rather than simply having [user name] read/write access in the list.

2. The enclosure has some wonky chipset that isn't compatible with the either your OS or your Mac. There's universal drive adapters available for under £10 that let you plug the bare drives in via USB.

You might also try repairing permissions on the drive with disk utility but it won't solve the "custom access" problem if that's what it is. To solve that it takes a number of UNIX commands to correct the permissions completely because disk utility simply can't do it.

Click to expand...

That's weird.. But even if the enclosure had a wonky chipset how could it suddenly become 'wonky' because I used it like 10 times probably in like 2 weeks before I stopped using it..

I'll post a picture as soon as I get a chance of the permission..

The thing is I did take off the enclosure and plug it into my windows PC and it still didn't work?.. Like I got the same symptoms.. The files was there and I could check file sizes but they took forever to load just the file size and if I tried open it. Windows image whatever said it wasn't compatible when they're all .jpg...

Weirdly enough it was ticking everytime i started up my pc for a little and then it would run as normal.. it would never turn off unless being copied from.. Hmm... ill try carbon copy cleaner and report back with results! Thank you so much for your help so far