Actually I agree with the person who posted the question but wouldn't mind hearing your reasons for why an nvram reset would expedite the failure of a failing drive. Is there some legitimate research you've based this statement on? Please link to it.
I didn't know hard drives were recoverable...and considering that everyone has assumed the drive failed because the computer shut itself down makes me wonder what you came to that conclusion with as well. Apple's developer documentation states that if a unrecoverable kernel panic happens that the computer will shutdown. This is most likely to be caused by a kernel extension and considering that the startup time is when kernel extensions are loaded to the operating system it seems most likely that a kernel panic was to blame and since reinstalling the OS fixed it I'd say it was a "corrupt" kext that was to blame.
Wonder how that got there....
Also uh the computer in question has nvram not pram so considering thats what the questions asked once again I second the OP's opinion. Also nvram can store data about which disk to boot to, and specifically cause a computer to shutdown if its connected in a raid If you can’t start up after resetting NVRAM or PRAM - Apple Support setup..a common feature of a computer that's been "corrupted" to be part of a botnet.
Can anyone explain this statement? They've answered how many questions with this level of expertise? Their super awesome ranking indicates 18700 of their answers have been marked helpful...smh.
"However, the slowness you experienced tells you that something happened with the hard drive"
However that was determined I'd love to know. If that was the case then spindump would mean new harddrive.