My Windows 7 locked up while I was on hacking some code on Notepad++ and after forcing a restart, I find the files I was working on last to be filled entirely with nulls.
I'm pretty sure this file was filled with what once could have been interpreted as PHP. Now it contains a bunch of nulls. Same with a few others.
I'd like to know what might have happened for the sake of learning and in order to prevent future problems. I don't really care for recovering the data, it's just I have no idea what happened here.
Extra data: running apps at time: Notepad++, Chrome, Explorer. Also EventViewer shows nothing but 'unexpected shutdown' after the fact. Windows' 'Previous Versions' have no recollection of past data. And I do make backups, but I was working on this file on my local machine and caught off guard. Occurred on an NTFS data drive (not system drive).