PC Freezing After Overnight Download External SSD Drive at 100% Disk Usage

Yesterday, I started downloading Baldur’s Gate 3 from ankergames.net. I first tried using Free Download Manager, but then I switched to just downloading normally via my browser (Opera GX) since Free download manager was estimating super long times. I had previously downloaded another game from the same site on my browsers download without any issues, so I thought everything would be fine.

This morning, the download seemed complete, so I turned off my PC since I was busy most of the day. When I came back later in the afternoon, I booted up my PC, and things seemed fine at first—until I started using it more. Shortly after my browser was still working, but when I tried to open File Explorer, it froze and said, “File Explorer not responding.” The screen went grey, my taskbar disappeared, and only my browser stayed visible on the other monitor, though it was semi-responsive. I tried restarting Windows Explorer, but it stayed grey. So, I fully shut down and rebooted.

After rebooting, same issue: File Explorer kept freezing, but I noticed that the external drive (where the game was downloaded) was maxed at 100% disk usage. I disconnected the drive and ran a deep scan with Malwarebytes—everything came up clean, no viruses—but I couldn’t scan with the drive connected since the PC was just unresponsive anytime it was.

Has anyone seen something like this before? It really sucks because it was a 1TB SSD that cost me a decent amount for something so small, and I’d really love to get it working again. Maybe even if the files can’t be recovered, I just want the drive to be usable again. Although of course If can get the files back that would be preferred.

Thanks in advance for any help