Researchers from Michigan and Zhejiang University have demonstrated how sonic and ultrasonic signals can be used to cause physical damage to hard drives just by playing ultrasonic sounds through a target computer’s own built-in speaker or by exploiting a speaker near the targeted device. Sound interferences that lasted for 105 seconds or more caused the stock Western Digital HD in the video-surveillance device to stop recording from the beginning of the vibration until the device was restarted. The team proposed some defenses that can be deployed as a firmware update to attenuate the intentional acoustic interference, including a sensor fusion method to prevent unnecessary head parking by detecting ultrasonic triggering of the shock sensor.
Source: https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/hard-drive-failure-hack.html