External Hard Drive appearing as Local Disk, not opening

When I plug in my WD "My Passport" 1TB hard drive, I can hear that a device has been connected, but when I open explorer the name's been changed to Local Disk (E:) and I can't perform ANY operation on it like open it, check properties or scan with an antivirus. I can't even eject it. Also the laptop slows down considerably and internet becomes too slow to open any page.
I tried running "chkdsk" and the data recovery software "PhotoRec" on it but it just keeps scanning for hardware and even after leaving it for 6 hours, it got nowhere. I tried opening "Disk Management" but even that keeps loading forever. A few times after the problem started, it told me to format the drive to be able to use it, but now even that message doesn't come and I'm not even able to format the drive(though I prefer getting all my data back, but it's better than spoiling the HDD).
The drive is physically fine as I kept it very carefully and I can hear the smooth rotation of the disk, plus there are no 'clicking' sounds coming out of it.

A few things you can try.

1. Try accessing it is Safe Mode
2. Try from a WinRE or Win PE disk
3. Try from a Linux boot disk. If Linux reads it you can at this point rescue your data.
4. Open the Passport and hook the drive up directly on a SATA channel and try it in Windows again. It could be the Passport controller causing the issues.
5. Running a chkdsk /r is the way to go, but only after rescuing data.
6. In any one of the above environments you can run a drive utility such as GSmartControl to a) check SMART attributes, and b) perform the Long test.

Thanks for the replies! I'll do as the two of you have suggested and get back with the results as soon as possible.

I will add uninstall its drivers and let it re-install. May be best if done after a successful Linux test.

Try with Linux as already suggested.

Please read this post Is there any way of saving a completely unrecognisable hard drive?.

Prepare your Lucid Puppy Pendrive using Rufus. https://rufus.akeo.ie/ (If you have any data on the pendrive back it up elsewhere since all data in it will be lost when Rufus formats the pendrive and writes Lucid Puppy in it.)

Read this and try to familiarise yourself on how to use Lucid Puppy. Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer In your case it will be the non-responding/problematic external drive.

With your WD external drive plugged in and the Lucid Puppy pen drive plugged in, boot your PC. Use the onetime boot menu to boot Lucid Puppy from the pendrive.