External drive crashed

[Kellie W]

Hi Brian, I have a MacBook running Tahoe 26.3.1(a) and an iMac running on Sequoia 15.6.1. I stored all my photos on a MyPassport Ultra for Mac by WD. I used the external on both machines interchangeably. After I edited the photos, I would make a photobook and upload the edited photos to the cloud. My external drive crashed. In all fairness it was my fault. I forgot one of Damien's golden rules about do nothing with your computer when you were transferring files. This is when it crashed. This hard drive has all my travel photos and all my other photos for the last 3 years on it. I was working on editing my photos from March 2025 to now. My external now takes all day to load the directories (even when I turn off screen saver, sleep etc) and then may or may not load the photos from the directory when selected. I contacted WD who told me to connect to the drive using the MacBook and run disk utility / first aid, which we did together 2x. It did not work. So he told me to shut down the computer and then unplug the directory. Then try on my older apple machine. After several hours, the iMac cannot even find the drive since I ran the first aid (it could prior).

I need to use some recovery software and was not sure which is the best to use. I don't need all the photos but there are some very important ones that I have not yet edited that I would like to recover. WD gave me a list of companies that maybe able to help; but I am sure some are better than others and better for apple. I have no experience in this and don't know what to do.

Are you able to help me? I am so sad.