[OT] HDD question

[Brian Densmore]

A friend says he had a hacker destroy his HDD. I told him that is not
possible.
He has tried zeroing out the drive and even performed a low level
format. It was running
 NT 4, he thinks. This means he had some software running as a disk
manager showing NT 
what it wanted to see. I am convinced, that it is not possible to
destroy a HDD remotely.
BIOS yes. Firmware yes, if it if eeprom/flash. Can anyone prove me
wrong?

Brian