My Black Armor (American) went TU while I was at the end of a decade in Texas. Bad timing. I had copies of most things but my son said he'd try to capture some of the .jpg files. He used a fan to belt air at the black box and this bought time.
He didn't try to open the box which I think might have been interesting. Yes, open the box and eyeball just what you've got in there. However, freezing and fanning are all about a drive that fails after so many moments due to heat rising - yours sounds like it knows it doesn't want to play right from the get-go. I have a feeling the USB converter thing will show the same, but it is certainly worth a try, and for a very small sum it's a very handy thing to have tucked away. More than once I've used mine to partition and format a new drive before putting it into a new computer.
Have you had a change of OS? i.e. gone over to W10.
When I plug my phone into W10 USB it more often than not does not show on the File Explorer 'Tree'. I don't know why, it always did on W7. Anyway, the thing is, it's there somewhere, and footling around allows me to find the directories and then the dcim / photos folders. Very, very annoying, but they are there.