Could SpinRite possibly be messing up my laptop hard drives?

Context:

We have a midsize business with a few dozen laptops. Whenever we get one in because someone leaves or gets an upgrade, standard procedure is to zero and then run SpinRite (level 4) on the hard drive to make sure it's in good shape before sending the laptop back out with a fresh OS. If the drive passes SpinRite (no bad sectors, minimal or no seek errors, no other kinds of errors)

Problem:

Recently, a bunch (six or seven) of these SpinRite-ed drives I've put in laptops have started making weird noises and going bad. They aren't headcrashing, but several have developed a persistent "tick", and then lots of read failures, and three others have developed high-pitched whining noises. None of the drives were exhibiting these issues before the SpinRite/zeroing process, and none of the laptops they were from were reported defective. These are different-sized drives, from differently-specced laptops that were purchased at very different times. The oldest drive is about 2.5yrs old, the youngest is just four months old. These laptops weren't used for anything beyond your average business user's tasks.

Question:

Is SpinRite somehow breaking my hard drives? If it were just one or two with this problem, I'd assume that they were just near the end of their lives already, and the intensive operations of SpinRite just pushed them over the edge. However, 7 hard drives is pushing the boundaries of coincidence. Is there any way that SpinRite could be causing this?

It's possible that you've pushed some marginal hard drives over the edge, yes.

The best place to look for an answer to your question would likely be the SMART data of the drives. Check the metrics and see if any drives reported failures before the SpinRite run.

Next time you get a drive in, capture the SMART data before running SpinRite and see if there's any failures.

Normally drives that "tick" are faulty and need to be replaced. The ticking sound is the head mechanism attempting an self alignment procedure. SpinRite is not the cause of those problems, although it can cause a drive to reveal weaknesses, much like the old burn-in tests we used to perform on new computers.

Laptops of that age have often had a hard life, especially when they're owned by someone else, and the hard drives are by far the most sensitive to mechanical abuse. I'd recommend you abandon your current system and just replace the drives on laptops that are going to be re-used if they're more than a couple of years old. Failure to do so often results in far higher costs in the long term.