I have a Western Digital 500gb sata 16m cache that i have been using as an external drive using a usb to Sata cable. It has been working great for some time, but yesterday, i was using search to find a file on it, and it suddenly made my explorer stuck and crashed. After that, when i connected my drive, it did not let me access my files, and windows started asking me to format it. I didn't try to format it, right now it shows up in my computer, as E:

I have tried a couple of data recovery softwares - namely, R-studio, Easeus and Active partition. R-studio has been the best one for me that worked (randomly), it gave me access to all my files (in the correct folders) after running a scan, and i even transferred some files out before it crashed. I have seen it give i/o error earlier, but not anymore.
I clicked the "Fix MBR (Create typical MBR) in Active, and it seems to have made it able to acces drive a bit. earlier it was giving me a "can not read" errors on all these softwares.

When i go to disk management - it takes a long time to load and shows "Connecting to virtual disk service"
in Easeus. it shows "E:Main Backup (NTFS) 465.75GB and info as WDC WD50 00AAKS-00V1A0 USB Device".
although when i try running intelligent search, it runs for an hour without any result, but shows that it has found Total Files": 110572. NTFS file records: 110572, NTFS boot:1.

When i run checkdisk command from cmd as : chkdsk E: /r , earlier it was giving me "Can not access drive".
Now, it is telling me,
The type of file system is NTFS, windows can't run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

My question is, what should i do about this, as all these softwares indicate that my files are intact, i just am not able to access them correctly.

I have a lot of family photos on it, and i promise i'll be more careful once i get them out from this drive, any help is benificial. Thanks.

Your drive is sick, if not dying.

My suggestion would be to image your drive as soon as possible to a new one, using some non-windows software (like ddrescue) that can handle typical drive failures (bad sectors etc).
Then, once the image is complete, scan it using R-Studio to get your data back.

Of course, DIY has its risks and doing this can result in losing your data for ever. The safe route to go is to consult a professional who can have your drive evaluated.
From what you're saying, it should be too costly AT THIS POINT.

If you understand the risks of DIY and accept them, try searching this forum for 'ddrescue' and follow the instructions.

Good luck.

PS. You mention that your drive is 'external'. What model? Remember that most of WD's modern external drives hold encryption on their USB bridge.

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