Sure if they physically damaged the hard drive, though at that point the failure and the code were largely unrelated. Though if they were using a computer with an SSD only I would have no clue. Assuming they aren’t lying id have to look at the computer physically, perhaps even pry it open to see if there’s any noticable damage.

There’s also the possibility that they are just stupid and overheated their CPU by having too many apps open. Then they blamed their hard drive overheating because they are stupid.