External Drive is being impossible

Hello,
My external drive (a 500 GB WD My Passport) recently started acting up. It freezes anything I seem to click or try to use and it won't unfreeze until I unplug the HD (tested this while letting the PC try to unfreeze overnight). Whenever I plug the HD it does not show up in My Computer, but I can see in the Device Manager that it does recognize my HD is plugged in because it pops up a USB Mass Storage Device on the list.

Another thing is that whenever I unplug the HD windows pops a message saying my HD needs to be formatted and even includes the hard drive letter it used to assign my drive (in this case, H:). All of these symptoms appear on my laptop as well. I have tried other storage devices I own with both my PC and laptop - works perfectly fine.

I don't mind wiping the HD clean but I'd like to avoid it if possible. Does anyone here have a possible solution for me?