External Hard Drive Not Functioning

I'm not sure if this is the right community for this problem, but my external, back-up hard drive (WD My Book), on which I use Time Machine, is not working. I didn't realize it was working for about a week (I still don't know why it's not working), and when I went to go investigate the problem my computer told me that I did not have permission to write in the drive, only read. I tried to change the permissions, but they were all greyed out, stopping me from changing them (I am the sole account on this computer).
I used Disk Utility to see if it could repair the disk, but it came back with the message, "You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can". I have now commandeered my father's external hard drive, which has more than enough space for my needs, but no matter what I do I cannot find a way to back up the files from the defunct drive onto the new one.
Any suggestions on how to back up the old drive? Otherwise I'm just going to have to reformat the drive and lose everything.

Several things first if you are really running Leopard 10.5.1 then run Software Update and update to 10.5.8 the most current build of Leopard. If that isn't the case then please update your profile.
As for your EHD a couple of suggestions, I'd try doing a SMC Reset first, if it doesn't work the first time try 2-3x. If that doesn't do it then restart in Safe Mode. If neither the SMC Reset or Safe Mode restart don't work you may need to replace the EHD. Unfortunately WD EHD's have a bad history on this forum. If you are forced to replace it I'd recommend almost any other manufacturer. There are 3 I like a lot, more money than WD but what price do you put on your backup?
OWC Mercury Elite Pro series
LaCie d2 Quadra series
G-Tech G-DRIVE series

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    My problem now is that my internal hard drive is filling up and I must transfer some photos to an External Hard Drive (EHD).  I thought the simplest solution was to transfer my iPhoto Library since I don't really use it anyway and many people advise to simply format my EHD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).  However, if I do that, my understanding is that I will not be able to then transfer the files to a PC, if I decide in the future to do so.  The solution, as suggested by others, was to then format my EHD as "ExFAT".  However, if I do that, my understanding is that iPhoto will not function properly.
    So my questions include the following:
    1.  Is there any harm in simply deleting my entire iPhoto Library from my internal hard drive to free up space since I believe I have been downloading all my pictures in a separate location anyway (MyPictures folder)?  Or will deleting my iPhoto Library somehow delete these other photos (even though they are not named similarly)?
    2.  If I decided that transferring my iPhoto Library to a Mac OS Extended (Journaled)-formatted EHD was the best solution, what would my options be if in the future I wanted to transfer the photos to a PC?  Is that option lost forever?  Or could I somehow transfer the photos from the EHD to the MacBook Pro, then re-format the EHD to ex-FAT, copy back the photos from the MacBook Pro to the ex-FAT-formatted EHD and then transfer the photos/videos to my PC?  Is there an alternative better solution?
    3.  Any other suggestions?
    Thank you

    1 - no - if you do not like or use iPhoto then yu have no need for the iPhoto library - it is sefl contained and deleting it will not affect anything except iPhoto
    2 - you can export photos form iPhoto to any format drive - it is only the iPhoto library that has drive format restrictions
    Reformatting a drive totally erases it so you can not simply change the format of a drive without removing everything on it
    3 - deciede what you want  - if you use iPhoto then it has no cross platform capability and nothing you do in iPhoto is directly of use on a PC - you have to export from iPhoto to a volume that a PC can read
    Since you do not like or use iPhoto and it will not do what you want I have no idea why you are messing with it at all
    LN

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