Just throw the drive (just the drive, no casing, etc.) in a plastic zip-loc bag and then in the freezer for a few hours, use a dock to copy the data over to another PC then get a new drive.
WDs used to be the best drives - even better then Seagate drives. Back in the 1990's and even though the mid 2000's I bought only WDs but I don't know exactly when but their quality went downhill a lot sometime around 2005-2007. No more for me. I'm even seeing some fail early at work (which can be a serious mess with some of my users). I've been going for Seagate lately.
I'm using samsung drives. They are the bomb. But sometime in the past several years, they sold their division to Seagate and they are now made in China. If the drive says made in Korea, its a damn good drive.
I do have a few Seagates (especially their goFlex) and have never had a problem with them as well. Speaketh too soon???
I'm still within the time frame to return my new WD drive, do you guys think I should go this route? I need a dependable 3TB usb drive, any recommendations? I won't be doing live automated system backups with it, just periodic manual backups.