Seagate FreeAgent 1tb external hd issues

I have a Seagate FreeAgent 1tb external hd that is no longer working properly. When I plug it in to my comp, it takes forever to be recognized, luckily it's being recognized at all, I guess. Unfortunately, it's being recognized as "Local Disk: (G)" as opposed to FreeAgent. When I click on it to look at the files, the bar at the top seems as though it's reading and progressing, but when it gets close to the end, it stops. Sometimes it says "not responding." Yet other times I get some sort of I/O error. Other times still it says that I need to format the hd.

I really, really need to be able to access these files as they contain home videos and pictures of my little ones that I do not have anywhere else. =/ Yes, completely my bad because I hadn't backed them up anywhere.

I tried the Seatools diagnostic long generic test, and it failed. I also tried r-studio and I got as far as the scan. The screen says that there are read errors at position 0, 512, 1024, etc. Every one of them in multiples of 512. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error (1117).

Any suggestions, please?

Also, I took it out of the case and plugged it into a desktop sata connection; but when I go to boot it up and the computer is running through its normal bootup process (when it's doing the DOS-looking stuff before it gets to the Windows processing then follow-up login screen), it recognizes the other hd but stops at the Seagate as though it's trying to recognize it before booting up. I hope that makes sense.

Thank you!

 

I've been told that the heads are bad within the hard drive. Based on the information that I provided, does that sound like that might be what's wrong? If so, what's my best option in getting that repaired or replaced so that I can get the data off of it? I'm hoping to not be spending the $600 to $1500 that one particular company quoted me.

Thank you