It appears that your drive may be afflicted with WD’s “slow issue”. If you examine the drive’s SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo or HD Sentinel, you will probably find reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.
I would clone your drive, sector by sector, using a tool such as ddrescue, and then use data recovery software on the clone, if necessary.
However, to prepare your drive for cloning, you should apply the “slow fix” in the following threads:
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187&start=20
http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=998&p=4345#p4345
WDMarvel provides a single-click solution for this problem. It costs US$10 for a one-month licence.
Otherwise contact forum member “beLIEve” ( http://community.wd.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/190214)..)
