Media Encoder Corrupted My Harddrive

Howdy, so recently I did a walk cycle animation for my class in After Effects. Went to Media Encoder to render it, and while waiting for it to render I accidentally clicked on my extended harddrive. Immediately, got a, "major hardware failure", and couldn't access it from the normal files option. Safetly ejected it, and plugged it back in, and everything seemed fine.

Later, started working on my video game project I have on Monday, Sunday was the previous one, and it randomly failed then too. Had to erase an hours worth of work because of how bad it cramped up. I bought a new extended harddrive recently just in case, and honestly didn't think I had any damage as most files were opening okay after I ejected it and plugged it back in again. Then I started copying stuff over, and so far have lost 60+ files of videos and pictures.

So far, its mainly memorabilia I've lost, like old game clips, but I have all my graphic design work from junior highschool to sophmore college on this thing. Usually, I wouldn't blame after effects or media encoder for this, but it is the only thing that makes sense especially since media encoder was the one that prompted the harddrive failure to me. I have NEVER had issues with this harddrive in my life, up until now and all I did was accidentally click it while rendering.

Mainly wanted to know if anyone else has had this issue, I saw a post that vaguely illuded to my issue, but that was from 2020. And I wanted people to be aware of this, possible, new issue. Currently looking for people to try and recover and repair my harddrive though, because I'm skrewed if its anything for my work as I am a senior in college and I need this work for portfolios; its looking to be 100$ tho. Also I'm now anxious to even use media encoder, as I have one or two more assignments due using After Effects, I don't need it to break anything else.