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There is only one way to destroy ANY hardware through software, and that is essentially Overclocking commonly accomplished through BIOS or an OC App that does the same thing - increase voltage and/or increase speed. Linux, being a kernel, didn't... COULDN'T do that.
I'm not so sure. There was talk some years ago of Windows viruses that could destroy hard drives by writing over and over to the same spots. Of course, that could be just an urban myth...
Hello hazel and yes it is often difficult to distinguish myth from fact especially with what must have been on of the first memes created to respond to the plethora of forwarded AOL virus warning emails That one claimed it was a virus that would eventually change the "Cold" setting on one's refrigerator
Regarding multiple writes to a "spots" even if that was an entire sector (highly unlikely in itself) it would not result in a destroyed hard drive. To explain.. first it would require direct-to-disk writing which is deeper than a Low-Level Format. If one was so adept at Assembly (or Machine Code )to manage to support the resources needed to run the system upon which the virus was installed to support Assembly and also of course have complete ROOT privileges, the latter being easy on Windows but difficult on *Nix, to directly write to a specific area(s) of a disk repeatedly while maintaining all of that, as highly unlikely as that is, it STILL wouldn't destroy the drive. The most salient point is in order to do far simpler wrong things one has to create or copy a malignant app to do such things or to know deep and unusual dark programming which, specific to this thread, is never done by a default OpSys. The OP would have to do all that on purpose or out of sheer ignorance, with the latter being the most likely, but actually from the gist of his post, it is my guess he/she wouldn't know how to change the cold setting on a 'fridge
Further it is my weak conclusion that this is an attempt at trolling based on the perceived security of The Cathedral and fear of The Bazaar. Admittedly the post actually sounds a lot like that last word.
Hey....lOL....Is that Stallman ? NO you cant watch videos ! NO you cant use Goofle. NO your video card is evul. NO your printer is evul.NO your electricity isn't free.
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