Premiere Pro crashes external hard drives

Sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your storage media.

Software related issues for video editing (be it Premiere Pro, Resolve, or Media Composer) tend to be things like playback lag or dropped frames, cache/scratch disk demands, or export/render failures.

What you are describing sounds like a hardware related issue, specifically corrupted drives or bad sectors.

Check the health and integrity of your storage media with something like macOS Disk Utility’s “First Aid” option.  On the Mac side, I really like TechTool Pro and Disk Warrior.  If the company that made your storage media provides a utility for checking the disks, that is worth using..

Other things to check are the cables being used and the power supply.

When checking external storage media, it can be helpful to do so with it connected to a different workstation.

Can you tell us more about your system specs

and your project workflow? what type of files are you working with?

Premiere Pro does not destroy hard drives, you can always send your

system logs to Adobe Staff to check what went there, and if there was anything

related to processes linked to Premiere Pro during the incident.

There are certain kinds of malware like cryptominers that destroy hard drives,

and if they were abusing system processes by the same time you were editing on 

Premiere Pro, this could lead to your hard disk being overused and overheated,

which then leads to your hard drive being damaged. Even if you have antiviruses intalled.