Can two weeks of inactivity kill a hard drive?

I recently avoided four feet worth of snow by going to Mexico for two weeks. Before I left I turned off my computer. After I came back I turned it back on and it ran slowly for a few minutes before winging it's way off to hard drive heaven.
The computer is still in pretty good shape so I'm going to shell out and replace the drive, restore my time machine backup and be on my merry way, but the timing of this whole affair still strikes me as odd. Is there any way that turning off my computer for two weeks could have killed an already weak drive? Or is this just a coincidence?

Hi, AD, and welcome to Apple Discussions. No, it's probably just a coincidence. There's a small chance, if the PB was left in an unusually cold environment while you were away and started up before it had a chance to reach a normal room-temperature range, that the lubricant in the HD had stiffened up and accelerated a failure that was soon going to happen anyway. Be that as it may, there's no reason to worry that a couple of weeks of inactivity in a normal working environment is dangerous to a hard drive.

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