Intentionally? That sucks. Depending on how the data is erased, it may be possible to recover. Most people choose a simple formatting, which doesn't overwrite the data. However, once the hard drive is used again then the data is lost. Some years ago my sister-in-law's boyfriend approached me to fix a laptop computer for him, said he was going to give it to my sister-in-law as a gift. One of the problems was a blown hard drive. With my tech tools I was able to recover much of the data, even though it was deleted and formatted. It had many pictures of him and his previous girlfriend on it, and the laptop appeared to belong to the previous girlfriend. I told him the computer was trash and not fixable, and not to bother me again. Moral of the story - some data is better to be lost forever.
Yea good call on telling him the computer was trashed, he owes you one. The story that was on here made sound like his work was gone forever, and he had a pretty extensive portfolio, bummer. Digital vs physical I guess, like when the deceased Vivian Maiers work was found a few years ago and was developed, what a treasure.