Hardware causes 3 external drives to wipe?

[moondoggy1111]

I had an issue with my PC recently (Windows 10) that required a clean install.  There were some issues with my old SSD so I bought a new one for the install.  Soon after I installed Windows both my old SSD and a 2 TB HDD in an external dock were wiped clean (no readable file system).  After doing numerous virus scans I did not another clean Windows install.  This morning I had an external USB connected 3 TB Seagate drive get wiped wiped again with no readable file system.  I did virus scans on the Windows SSD and found nothing.  Can this be hardware issue?

[Lisa_maree]

Unlikely a hardware issue, more likely software. It would take software a long time to delete the whole of a 2 TB usb drive.
I suggest checking the drives for data with a drive hex editor like this one.

https://www.diskgenius.com/how-to/hdd-data-recovery.php

This will show if the files are still visible , allow you to display the drives contents as hex and ascii and run a file recovery.

Another program which may show why the drives are getting erased is HDsentinel