It wasn't a virus attack. I was copying a movie from my phone to the PC. I don't know what happened but next thing I remember is seeing the blue screen of death. When I rebooted the computer, Windows explorer could not access the mounted HDD. I tried formatting but it didn't work. I'd rather not spend any money paying for software before I know whether the HDD can be 'saved.' So guys, do you know of any software that can fix a problem of this nature?
First think you want to do is to run a SMART test. It usually gives you some more information about what's going on. I recommend checking the harddrive manufacturers website for a SMART tool, but if you can't find it from there then you can try a 3rd party one.
If a full format did not work then it is most likely broken. You can take it to a specialist, but that is going to cost you more that the HDD is worth. You are better off buying a new one. Unless you have some precious files on the HDD that you need recovered, and that may not be possible since you formatted it.
@ crimsong host, thanks for the software suggestion. I'll look it up and see if it helps me fix the issue. If it doesn't then I guess instead of wasting time getting worried about the drive I could simply get myself another external drive. My only concern is. . .what if what happened recurs?
Okay, your hard drive crashed. It happened to me once, and in the middle of a project, and it sucks. The problem here might be that your hard drive is full of bad sectors, so full of them that eventually the hard drive basically just gave up. You can't really 'fix' that kind of problem per se' but you can recover your files, as long as the hard drive is not physically damaged. You can use Recuva to recover your files, but its not always 100% effective since some files might be permanently damaged and might not be recoverable. And also, if you did fix your hard drive, DO NOT use it anymore, its a very bad idea to re-use a hard drive that has crashed once. Its unstable now and you will experience a hard drive crash again, that's for sure. I'd suggest you go buy a new one, HDD nowadays are cheap, don't risk losing your files again.
BSoD comes up when you have installed a new hardware, the hard disk is failing or the memory modules are not working correctly. The first thin you should remove an new hardware it might be causing the problem. Then you can change the memory modules to see if they are the ones causing all the trouble to your system.
