I've seen power supplies go bad, hard drives fail, but have never seen a virus or malware that can physically destroy a hard drive.
I had one from a relative recently where they had let their anti-virus software expire and found 134 Trojans, malware and viruses that had dragged it down to about nonfunctional and was able to clean it up without reloading the OS and managed saved all data.(Took me about 7 hours before I was satisfied it was clean)
I have my doubts (along with other tech guys I know) that a virus could actually physically destroy a hard drive.
I am aware there might be a number of reasons, but my virus protection is up to date...and if you read the post I repeated by another freeper, the same thing happened to them just recently in exactly the same way...after accessing the Orly Taitz website.
What’s done is done, I am not blaming anyone, but I DO suggest that documents with links to that website be removed from FR. I would NOT want anyone else to experience what I have, nor bear the cost.