Faulty Hard Drive

I'm sorry to hear about the problems you're having with the external, I know how unpleasant this could be...

At this point you can try to boot up with Linux Live CD and see if you will be able to gain access to the data you want to retrieve. Basically what you have to do is download/burn the ISO image to a CD or USB and change the boot order to the media you burned the Linux on. Once it loads, you could try and mount the drive (or if Linux can read it, it will mount by itself) and see if you can transfer the files from the external. You can take a look at this Ubuntu Help article for more information if you want:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Hopefully it will do the job, but in case it doesn't then contact a data recovery company and see if your information can be retrieved from the drive, and keep in mind that the more you use the drive and try to repair it, the worse the damage and the extraction of files may become. Here's a link with the WD recovery partners you can take a look at:

http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Ovo0SO

Lastly, since it's a new drive, you can also contact our support and arrange a RMA so you can get a replacement unit from here:

http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=YwnMtM

Hope this helps and best of luck!