Spinning disk is so solid a technology as to be nearly “solid state.” The likelihood of an entire batch of 2.5” laptop hard disk drives going back is so infinitesimal as to be just assumed zero. I have a background in electronics and can tell you that the factories producing these parts in bulk are so sophisticated that they could catch even a micro-level flaw in a component before it left fabrication.
A few years ago, Samsung had a bad batch of memory make it on to the market. The recall was so effective that it’s being used in business and management textbooks in universities across the world as an example of extreme efficacy in product lifecycle management. Less than 1% of the batch was actually used. Most of it was stopped in transit and sent back before it made it into a consumer’s hands.
Hard disk drive failures, esp. at the controller and/or enclosure level are virtually unheard of. You’ll lose a bearing in the spindle sleeve or a read/write head before you have a catastrophic loss of data, and in those two scenarios, data is 100% recoverable.
I am sure that the IRS stores the majority of their information on recycled AOL 7.5 inch floppy disks that people got in the mail. Seems legit.
I remember the Deskstar, aka "Deathstar drives from early 2000's. There was the bad capacitor problem of the mid 2000's Are all these processes worked out so it never happens again? I am not arguing that is what happened, but it could be the remotest of possibilities.
At this point I haven't seen any reports about what happened to those 20 computers that may have crashed. The first 7 were close associates of Lerner. If they were all in the same building and I was their IT guy, I'd be like WTF. If they were spread around DC and Ohio you might know there was a major problem or coverup going on.