External Hard drive making a grinding noise

Here's my problem and question:

1. I have an older external hard drive from Wester Digital, roughly 5-7 years old id say. It's the model that is silver with an on and off switch in the back. haha it's ancient i know. Well it recently began to make that god awful grinding/scratching sound. It happened tonight when my power went off. As soon as it came back on and i turned the hard drive on the grinding begins, no pun intended. Can anyone tell me what and why it's doing that?

2. The files are still on there and accessible but i bought a new WD to transfer all the info. Can anything be done to fix this hard drive so i don't have to trash it?

3. Can an external hard drive be converted into an internal hard drive? if so, how does one do that?

thanks guys

 

1)It's in the trash catagory
2)No
3)Yes and dismantle then plug it in

 

haha well i kinda figured it was bad but, id like to know why it's bad. Why is it making that sound. If i dismantle it and make it an internal drive, will it still have that grinding sound?