I have a WD Elements 2TB drive. It just started giving me problems. I plug it into my PC and it recognizes after a few minutes. Once it does that, it takes another couple of minutes for the drive to actually open. I am trying to copy my family pictures and videos off of it onto my PC. It will start going then it just freezes. I really don't want to lose all the memories over the years. What can I do? Please help. Also I ran the smart test that WD has on there site. It fails on the Raw Read Error Rate section. Everything else is in the green. Of course I checked my warranty and it says it expired a week ago. Figures!! :(

I had a similar problem with a similar drive. What I did worked for me but you may not want to try this.
I stripped it apart took out the drive & via the SATA or IDE ports connected it directly to my PC, it may be that the Power Supply on the External Drive is failing (hence the long time to recognize then freezing when you try to extract)
I then purchased an external hard drive caddy & re-mounted it.
If you do not feel comfortable doing this drop into your local PC repair shop & they will do it for you (just ask to stay & watch them do it as you have VALUABLE memories contained on the drive)
I hope that helps.

Basically you're drive is failing.
You need to backup any data on the drive immediately!
It can only get worse from where it is now.

Sorry To Hear About your drive, I know the Feeling Call or Get online with WD And Complain Like Hell mentioning the drive wty was only out a week. I Use Seagate External Drives and Had 1 Put Back under Wty, so you have a chance. As To Recovering files i use seatools, Don't know if it will work on yours, but worked ok for me. Others will add more and Better suggestions.. Best Wishes..

Thanks for the replies. Im not that computer savvy to open it up and do all that. I sent WD a request to extend my warranty so lets see if they respond to it. If I take it to a PC repair, Does anyone know around how much they would charge to extract the data. Not sure if I would want to do that though because I have A LOT of movies and tv shows also. I wonder if they frown upon that.

Insert Your Drive On Back Side Of Your CPU(Cabinet) Instead Of Front.
Secondly Please Take Backup On Dvd's If Your Hard Drives Are Not Reliable.
And Contact Your Hard Drive Vendor Immediately.....! Badly Mad If This Kind Of Thing Happens.....
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Go to WD people and they will do it for free. One week's gap won't mater!
Anything you do without proper knowledge WILL/MAY help you lose your data. Better to be safe with such things!

I doubt WD would do anything like that.
A PC repair shop would be risky if you have pirated stuff.
I would recommend finding someone on craigslist. They are usually cheaper and usually pirates themselves.
If you need to backup the stuff bad just go and pickup a drive that's just a few 100 gigs for cheap.

I have another external hard drive. I think its only like 100gigs. I am currently trying to transfer the photos over to my PC but I am getting slow speeds. Right now I am getting 570 Kb/sec. I have 44.4 gigs of pictures. This is going to take forever. My elements hard drive is plugged into the back of the tower. The speed seems to jump around.