External HD content destroyed by something

While trying to download some files to a friend's Dell laptop, my entire 88 gig file volume out of a 180 gig external drive disappeared. Now it shows up as zero content. I intend to switch off autorun and plug the drive into another PC for virus/malware scanning, but this will not explain what happened. Can there be some nasty out there that is so bad that it permanently destroys a hard drive?
Immediately after the wreck, we had all sorts of screen advice on downloading antivirus software at considerable cost.