External HD stopped working!!?

[Breathless]

So here's the story. I was watching Deadman Wonderland last night off of my external HD. I just finished episode 6 and when I opened episode 7 my hard drive started to go funny. Episode 7 at first didn't load and vlc had an error, it wouldn't load no matter how much I tried to open it. I tried to open episode 6 (which just worked 10m beforehand) and that wouldn't open either. I couldn't open any videos from my hard drive and I never tried opening anything else so I'm not sure if it's limited to only videos.

I googled around a bit and saw a solution that was 'go into disk management -> refresh the hard drive' so I did. I could play other videos, but when I tried episode 7 again my hard drive went all funny, so this time I decided to refresh the hard drive again but this time I deleted episode 7 and downloaded it from somewhere else. It played fine, I was satisfied so I went to sleep on that.

I wake up, turn on my computer and I start to download some anime via utorrent. (Zetsuen no Tempest just came out) All of a sudden it says 'error: write to disk. unable to find specified file path' (I'm going by memory so that might not be 100%). I google it, I follow some uttorent guides/troubleshoots and they don't help at all. I couldn't bother dealing with it at the time so I decide to watch some anime. I open up some anime and I'm hit with this message, 'cannot find file'.

I tried to refresh it once again using diskmgmt.msc, when I do it disappears from the disk management list and I get a popup. 'Initialize disk, you must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.' Now I'm shaking in my boots. I stop here out of fear of breaking my hd and losing all data. (I'm kind of scared I've already done that) - note that I can still see the hard drive in 'my computer', and open it. It's just that everything I open inside it comes up with 'cannot find file' or something similar.
/Edit: it doesn't 'disappear from the disk management but rather shows up as: "Disk 1, Unknown, Not initialized"

Other notes, My computer has been dying. I've had a BSOD a few times recently. The only thing I've downloaded this past week is - WhoCrash and anime. The anime I downloaded from I used mIRC or uTorrent and got it straight off the groups site. (fffansubs, rorisubs, utw, commiesubs, sgkk, etc.)
My external hard drive is a Seagate 2TB External Hard Drive.

Any ideas as to what happened? Maybe I messed it up using diskmgmt.msc? Any way to salvage it? Or if that's not possible, can I somehow move the data off of the hard drive and onto something else!?
./Cries

Edited February 9, 2013 by Breathless

[Dae314]

I can't tell if that was a hardware failure or a software failure, but unless you can get back into your disk, it doesn't sound like you're getting your data back. Sounds like your operating system can no longer read and parse your drive's file structure so... not really much you can do... I suppose you could try it on another computer, but if it's the disk itself that's got bad data on it, that's not gonna help you. What really needs to be done is a complete reformat. However, if it was a hardware failure on your HDD that started causing errors in the first place, a reformat isn't going to help you, and you'll need a new HDD. If you can somehow backup your data from your HDD, I would suggest thoroughly putting your drive through its paces before you start using it to store things again to confirm the hardware integrity.

There's also a REALLY (and I mean really) off the walls chance that somehow your files got commanded to be invisible to Windows... To test that, you'd just need to poke around the drive in an OS that's not Windows (linux would be good for this since I think it can support the NTFS filesystem).

[Breathless]

So, just making sure. My best plan of action is: 
1 -> Test HD on another computer (if it doesn't work) ->
2 -> Test HD on another computer that's not windows (if that doesn't work) ->
3 -> Reformat HD (If problem still stays) ->
4 -> Buy a new HD
Right?

Um, I'm not sure if this helps but I tried disconnecting and reconnecting my HD to the computer. Everything works fine for the first 10s and then it crashes (my whole computer freezes up a bit too). Just another nugget of info.

By the way, thanks for the speedy reply. 

[† L4ugh]

Personally, I would skip 1 and go straight to 2. You'd only be spreading a virus if that is what turns out to be the problem. Try Parted Magic, it's a live linux distro so you won't need to install it. It will support ntfs, and it can also scan for viruses with ClamAV. There's also a tool that can check the health of hdds, but I can't remember it's name off hand. If you can mount the drive with Parted Magic, I would back up everything you can. You may not get a second chance if you don't. 

[ZeroPenguins]

Sounds like a hardware failure or some corrupted sectors. Either way, I say go on linux and see if you can access it or not, if not then it's quite likely a hardware failure. Another method is to not use the USB interface and open the HDD and use the SATA connection directly to your motherboard. I find it works sometimes.

[Dae314]

If trying step 1 is easy and takes you <5 minutes to do, go for it, but I wouldn't go setting up a new Windows box just to test that option ^^;

Steps 2-4 are pretty essential to your troubleshooting needs though.

[Breathless]

Um, good news is my HD is working. Bad news is, I did absolutely nothing to it. This worries me that it can just break at any time again - but permanently. Maybe it was overheated or something?
Anyway, I didn't have anything big enough to back it up onto (~1tb of stuff) so I just split it up on like 15 different USBs, haha.

Is there anything I can do now that it's working to find out exactly what went wrong? And, thanks everyone for all the helpful replies.

[Dae314]

Great! you got your data off, now you can do as many destructive things as you need to to confirm the problem . You probably want to do a complete wipe and format of your drive.

What I'm going to describe may not be the most efficient way to go about thoroughly testing your drive, but it's the best I can come up with right now without researching drive diagnostic tools ^^;

You can run error checking with the Windows utility or third party stuff like HDTune and SeaTools. Other people here might have some suggestions for HDD checkup tools for you too.

Once you've done that and your drive is empty and recognizable by Windows, it's time for the first round of error checks. Presumably, your OS isn't so corrupted as to incorrectly format the drive, so if you start finding errors from the get-go, you probably have a hardware problem and your drive needs to be replaced. While the drive is reading/writing, listen to it for any out-of-the-ordinary clicking.

If you get past all the tests and formats and whatnot without any errors, you're in pretty good shape. You can probably pin the corruption to some one-time software screw-up and continue using the drive normally (albeit a little cautiously). If you get errors with anything though, I would suspect the hardware and say it's time to get a new drive.

Edited February 9, 2013 by Dae314

[stuartclarke]

As you checked all the possible method for working you Hard disk. yet it is not working means it become failure due to any reason. So to recover data from it a third party tool kernel for windows data recovery is one of the best that recover complete data from corrupted hard disk having windows OS. To know more visit: www.recoverlostfile.net

Edited April 8, 2013 by stuartclarke