You could try running the disk scan which might correct all the errors an improvement the downloads. It might work but also not for long. The downside is it might say the disc is unrecoverable. So last resort. PS Hope you now have backups of everything
Yep. I am backing up the photos twice. I'm having trouble with music folders. I have to download folder by folder manually; even then, there are sometimes errors, which means I have to go into the folder and drag the files from there. I don't understand why, but I'm pleased they are there.
Probably errors in the indexing. You might find some downloads work but you can't read the downloaded file because it's corrupted. Make a note and try again later after running chkdsk or similar
Good. Chkdsk is destructive, I'd use Testdisk which you can probably load through the "terminal" interface which is part of the Darwin software on the Mac. It's basically a Linux box with Mac software on top AIUI. Install this https://brew.sh/ then install Testdisk and use Testdisk to recover files.
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I salute your hard drive's effort