My girlfriend's external hard drive is failing (has failed). Ideally, I would like to transfer the data from the external hard drive to one of my own, reformat/fix her hard drive, and transfer the data back to her hard drive. Realistically, I expect she will need a new hard drive but I would still like to recover the data. Below are my current troubleshooting and thoughts on the hard drive followed by potential issues and solutions from what I have read online. I would really appreciate any help or guidance that anyone has to offer. Thanks.
Hard drive troubleshooting:
We first realized the hard drive had an issue about a week ago. When the hard drive was plugged into the computer it was recognized. Upon opening the hard drive in finder (she has a Mac) the files very slowly populated the file explorer (over the course of minutes; normally all of the files are immediately visible in finder for other drives). We were unable to open any of the files (the program corresponding to the file type would open but the actual file would never open (i.e. excel would open but the spreadsheet would never load))
I have since then tried to troubleshoot the external hard drive using my computer. The same issues persisted.I also noticed that when connecting to my windows 8 computer and the file explorer is opened to that drive the green bar at the top of the file explorer never fully loads (making me think there is potentially bad sectors and that the rive cannot be fully read.). Also the external hard drive does not make any clicking sounds or other audible sounds.
Since then I have tried other data cables to no avail. I scanned the drive for viruses but didn't find any. I am currently attempting to run chkdsk but the ETA is currently 999 hours so I doubt that will finish.
Potential Issue:
At this point, based on my troubleshooting and reading forums, I think there must be bad sectors on the harddrive. Potentially the bad sectors are in the indexing of the drive?
If there aren't bad sectors I am not quite sure what else it could be at this point.
Solutions:
This is where I would really appreciate the help. I am not sure what the best method is to recover the data. I also am not sure if the harddrive is fixable after recovering the data.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post and any help that you offer.
Hard drive troubleshooting:
We first realized the hard drive had an issue about a week ago. When the hard drive was plugged into the computer it was recognized. Upon opening the hard drive in finder (she has a Mac) the files very slowly populated the file explorer (over the course of minutes; normally all of the files are immediately visible in finder for other drives). We were unable to open any of the files (the program corresponding to the file type would open but the actual file would never open (i.e. excel would open but the spreadsheet would never load))
I have since then tried to troubleshoot the external hard drive using my computer. The same issues persisted.I also noticed that when connecting to my windows 8 computer and the file explorer is opened to that drive the green bar at the top of the file explorer never fully loads (making me think there is potentially bad sectors and that the rive cannot be fully read.). Also the external hard drive does not make any clicking sounds or other audible sounds.
Since then I have tried other data cables to no avail. I scanned the drive for viruses but didn't find any. I am currently attempting to run chkdsk but the ETA is currently 999 hours so I doubt that will finish.
Potential Issue:
At this point, based on my troubleshooting and reading forums, I think there must be bad sectors on the harddrive. Potentially the bad sectors are in the indexing of the drive?
If there aren't bad sectors I am not quite sure what else it could be at this point.
Solutions:
This is where I would really appreciate the help. I am not sure what the best method is to recover the data. I also am not sure if the harddrive is fixable after recovering the data.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post and any help that you offer.
Unfortunately, it sounds like your drive most probably has failed indeed. 
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