Windows HDD protection?

hey guys and gals. I was given a laptop by my aunt to retrieve precious photos and videos and im running into a problem. I took out the hard drive and hooked it up to my computer via a USB 3.0 adapter and i can view everything on the drive without issue but when trying to transfer anything it chugs badly. almost as if its paused. Im trying to virus scan right now and its running slower than snail pace. I was wondering if its because the drive is from a windows machine and my machine also runs windows that its trying to gain access but conflicting with protection on the drives partition? Ive never run into this problem before when doing this but i cant imagine whats making the process so slow. the drive acts fine to view and play anything on it but transfers stop after a few MB and then idle or pause... trying to cancel causes the programs to crash and im forced to disconnect the drive and reconnect it. any ideas? the Drive is from a windows vista machine and my machine runs windows 7.

I would bet that drive is somewhat damaged, try to check it via Crystal Disk Info to see more details.

Thats where I would start

i just realized that every now and then the disk makes a pattern of sounds. Ive experienced this from other working but dying drives in the past. now im trying to figure out how im going to save her personal items before its fully destroyed... any programs good for that? im going to check out crystal disk

I would just back up files and everything as much as I can and toss it out since it's failing.