Hey guys i'm need of some desperate help!

Basically I've had this old laCie external hard drive laying around for a while now so i decided to try rummage through the files to see if I had any important documents before taking it apart to put in my new computer and another internal hard drive..
But the problem I am having is that I found some family photos on there which is also pretty stupid the only place I think I saved these photos was on this hard drive..

When i first plugged this external hard drive into my iMac 27" it registered as a normal external hard drive but it just wouldn't index my hard drive which I didn't notice until I tried copying the photos from the hard drive to my computer which it just wouldn't allow me to and it would just crash..
(I also tried using data recovery tools but they all wanted me to pay and I really don't have the money to do that atm..)

So I decided then to unscrew it take the hard drive and put it in my new PC so I can just get a third party software to open the hard drive and copy out the necessary files... but then it got more annoying because my hard drive randomly started powering off whenever I tried to make a transfer between the external hard drive and my PC.. what was odd was that I was able to throw a picture into the external hard drive from my desktop and it would work fine.. I can also move this album into another folder in the external hard drive.. Since then i put the external hard drive back in its case and it is still being identified but I just want a way to copy the files over so I can format the hard drive..
I am willing to open up the case and put it back into my PC if needed, I will be willing to do anything except something that includes spending money but please do still mention any tips you do have even though they do include spending money..