Can you tell if the drive is spinning? Do you hear it making a clicking noise? If it is spinning and there isn't a clicking noise, then the motor and armature (heads assembly) are still okay. If there is no power then it could be the power adapter or the electronics in the external enclosure. The external drive is nothing but a regular hard drive in an external enclosure. If you can get the drive out of the enclosure without too much trouble, you could then connect it up as a secondary drive on a system and see if you can access it. If so, then you can buy an external enclosure for a few bucks and save yourself a good amount of money.
I would not count on the info at Amazon being correct. I have seen descriptions that I knew were wrong many times. Some of the sellers will post anything to try to sell an item. Get the model of the lens, Google info about it and check with Nikon on their website or with their tech support. As noted in another response to you inquiry, using a non-compatible lens can cause serious damage to you camera.
Would recommend that you go to Nikon's website and check their list of compatible lenses before trying to use it.
If you have another system to use or can use a friends you can Google this error and there are a lot of potential fixes for it. One of those would be to download the Win 10 ISO file from Microsoft and then burn it to a DVD so you can boot from that. Then you can use that to run repair on the drive and see if it can fix the error. This error usually pertains to a corrupted boot sector and files.
If you are able to get it to boot, you can revert back to your earlier OS if you want to. I would recommend that in the future you use the backup that is a part of Windows starting with Windows 7. It has the option of creating an image backup of your drive. You will need an external hard drive with a partition no larger than 2 terabytes or a really big stack of blank DVD's (you really don't want to use the DVD option even though it is there). It will also let you create a recovery disk or you can use you copy of the OS to boot from and restore the image to a corrupted disk or new disk. Detailed instructions are on-line if you Google creating Windows disk image.
30 plus years in IT and I don't recommend upgrading any earlier version of Windows to Windows 10. Way too many issues with older hardware.
Good luck!
Nikon has a download at their website you can download and install that will enable your system to see their RAW files. This may be of help to you in this situation and the future.
Winning photography has seldom been about taking a picture and having it printed exactly as it was shot. During the days of film much improvement and enhancement of shots was performed in the dark room using various techniques to enhance the print from the negative. Now with digital photography the capabilities of the camera have expanded and the dark room (now called post processing) have as well. So, don't feel like you have no chance to produce excellent and winning photographs. Just as in the past, it has always been a multiple step process. There are free post processing software programs out there so you don't have to spend a lot of money. Relax and enjoy learning about all of it.
What software are you using?
My Nikon allows me to shoot both at the same time. One memory card for raw one for jpeg. Then I can use whichever I want to. There are things you can do with raw to correct a good shot and make it a great one that cannot be done with jpeg, so there is an advantage to using raw. And you don't have to spend a lot of time in post processing (what used to be the dark room) to make minor improvements. As for those who think post processing is for geeks and takes away from your photography, I guess you think Ansel Adams spent too much time in the dark room.
With film we knew that as the ISO went up the grain of the shot would typically increase. In the digital world this is called noise which you can think of a visual static. The reason that most manufacturers set the ISO to auto now is because with the quality of the sensors and electronics in most current equipment, you have to get to pretty extreme ISO levels to start creating significant noise in you shot. In addition, most post processing software will give you the capability of reducing the noise in a shot.
So take a lot of shots in differing light conditions, shutter speeds and apertures. And then set you ISO to 100 or 200 and shoot the same conditions. Look at them and see what makes you happy. If you're satisfied with the auto setting, then it's one less thing to be distracting you from your shot.
Recommendation if you don't already know this. Starting with Windows 7, there is a backup program included that will let you make an "Image backup" of your system. Look under Windows Accessories, System Utilities or just Google where is it located for your operating system. You will need an external hard drive with a partition no larger than 2 terabytes (the drive can be larger, but the backup will only address a 2 terabyte partition), and that partition cannot be used for anything else. The image backup lets you create a backup that is a copy of your entire hard drive and a recovery DVD as well. Should your hard drive die, become infected or suffer some other calamity, you can connect the external hard drive backup, boot with the recovery disk or your original operating system disk and then restore your entire drive back to the state it existed at the time you performed the image backup. Then you can restore any data files you have created since that date (You are backing up daily aren't you?) and you will pretty much be back to where you were without having to reinstall all of your programs etc. It is also a useful way to clone your existing hard drive to a larger hard drive. You can Google this process and get detailed instructions and illustrations. 30 years in IT...please backup!