No I was not trying to reinstall anything before this happened. I have no idea what caused this...
But guys, I have repaired this! Actually you are right that something was wiped somehow as the device didn't want to boot. I figured out the same and tried flashing ROM again but I had the same error - no SD card was visible at all, but then another idea came to my mind. I reformatted the SD card to FAT32 (it was NTFS previously) and put the ROM on it again and inserted into the GPS slot. System didn't boot but now I hadn't the error regarding inability to mount external_sd. Now I was able to update the ROM again and voila! System is alive again (although it is completely fresh and all of my settings are gone....).
Many thanks to all of you who tried to help me!
@Malaysk
I think that this important info should be added to the 1st post and to the new ROM installation guides:
1) To update the ROM - it has to be put on FAT32 formatted SD card and inserted on GPS slot
2) To have Statusbar Mod working - /mtc-statusbar/status_bar.ini has to be put on NTFS formatted SD card and inserted on GPS slot
PS this forum is awesome