1TB WD Passport Failure

First I just wanted to say hi to all, and thanks for taking your time to read this! I'm very new here!

Recently my external hard drive literally just disappeared from 'My Computer' as a listed driver; I wasn't doing anything except just going on the internet at the time. It shows up as a listed device in device manager and there is no yellow triangle caution sign indicating a troubleshooting issue. Furthermore, when I check its properties, it says the driver is working fine etc.

I spent the next day or so doing all kinds of research and testing on this to get to a solution, but the news doesn't seem very optimistic.

So far I've tried:

1) System recovery to a prior date, rebooting my pc a few times, disconnecting/reconnecting my external HDD a few times, uninstalling/reinstalling the driver from the device manager (all of the basics, essentially) - no results, as expected
2) Using diskpart via cmd prompt - HDD doesn't show up
3) Trying to assign a new driver letter via 'Manage' from 'My Computer' - it shows the HDD as not initialized and unallocated
3a) --> Attempted to initialize via GUID but it gives me an I/O Error
4) Trying to assign driver letter via cmd prompt - HDD doesn't show up/unable to be accessed
5) WD Diagnostics Lifeguard Tool - both quick and extended tests have failed
6) MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Version - It labeled my external HDD as a 'Bad Disk' with a 'Logical' failure
7) Used a DriveCleanUp tool - didn't see any noticeable difference
8) Attempted a chkdsk F: via cmd prompt - same problem as #4
9) EaseUS Partition Master - doesn't detect my external hard drive

So far, not good obviously. I only have a few more ideas left which include:
1) Using TestDisk+PhotoRec (I have to purchase a new external HDD next week before I try this however)
2) Using Macrium Reflect+DDRescue (haven't attempted this either for the same previous reason)
3) Trying a new 3.0 WD Passport USB cable (purchased one online, waiting for it to be delivered), going back to the basics, haha!
4) Using a professional recovery service (last resort)
5) Giving up and mourning my loss for the months to come (last, last resort)

Ideally, I'd want to recover as much as I can from this external hard drive because it's a personal file collection of my past 3-4 years. I don't really care about the hard drive itself. I'm obviously an idiot for not having a back up of all of this, but there's not much I can do about that at this point.

Basically, I'm just looking for any and all feedback. Is this external hard drive a goner? Is there literally anything else I could try? Is there any possibility of saving ANY of my files? I'm pretty desperate for any good news here!