That is what I assume when I hit the send button. Investigating what happened to local HD's is still important. Hard drives failures and loss of data should have been reported to the national archives.
You would be surprised. MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) ratings on hard drives have grown to the order of over 1 million operating hours on average. Hard disk drives can withstand up to 300 Gs of impact without affecting the integrity of the spinning disks. Scratching a physical disk is nearly impossible without opening the case, which voids the warranty on every brand of disk, and even with an open disk enclosure, data can be recovered.
The only surefire way to destroy a hard disk drive is with thermite, or an analogous high temperature. This story of hard drives failing all over the place is ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of not just IT professionals but the American public in general.