does this sound like I damaged my hard drive

I dropped my external hard drive while moving my computer. When I try and play video files form the external they are very slow to load. I think I know the answer but have I damaged my external hard drive?

 

Run chkdsk and find out if it is damaged.
You have made a backup of the files on the suspected drive? do it now,better safe than sorry...

# Open "My Computer" and right-click on the icon for the drive that is to be checked.
# In the context menu that opens, choose "Properties".
# Click the "Tools" tab at the top of the Properties window.
# In the "Error-checking" section, click the button "Check now".

 

Are you getting any error messages with it or getting any unusual noises from it?

 

none that I can hear.

 

Copy a file or movie over to your main hard drive and play it. Does it play normally??? This would also be, as Petaluma said, a REALLY REALLY good time to back up ALL data on that drive.

 

I tried just that but even opening a folder takes a very long time. I am going to buy a new hard drive but would like to copy what is on the broken drive to the new one but it might take years. Any suggestion on how to transfer the data so that I am not actually using the cut or copy function? I was thinking ACRONIS