Plugging in to an externa sata usb adapter with power on

[Atomx]

I have a hard drive that has become unreadable, and I may have plugged it into one of these with the power on:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1DS3N87794

Would that be likely to cause a failure? The drive has Checkpoint security software installed, and on boot I get the Checkpoint login after which it bsod's on trying to start windows.

[rogfanther]

Likely ? Not. Possible, but improbable.

Chances are the filesystem got corrupted due to being disconnected abruptly some time, or the hdd failed by itself.

You should clone it to another disk, then try to run recover software in the clone.

[scratchy]

You will need the checkpoint emergency boot cd/USB stick. Depending on version there are ways to recover this and should be straightforward for a data recovery company, providing they can get a clone of the drive.