Have you tried another known working USB cable?
Does that happen if the external drive is plugged into another laptop or some other computer?
Does that happen if the external drive is plugged into another USB port on your laptop?
You need to take a look at what is going on during the "continues to read" process.
Couple of options available:
Look in the Event Viewer logs for errors. The logs are overwhelming but generally once past that you will quickly get a sense of what they can show you. Look for errors, warnings, etc..
You can use the Performance Monitor and/or Task Manager via your laptop to check on what applications, services, processes are running.
Open one or the other and watch for a while. Then open the other and again watch. Then plug in the WD 1TB drive and see what else starts happening.
You might see some process taking up all of the memory. Or all of the CPU time. Make note of the name, what it is doing etc. Then that can be researched for a possible solution.