Let me expand on my original question with an example...
Lets say that the 'unlink' command is used when the directory, or files, that 'unlink' will remove are not present on the drive due to being manually removed. So, basically, unlink isn't finding the files to remove. Can this damage the drive?
The reason for my original question was that I am trying to figure out if the use of the 'unlink' command caused the file structure on one of our servers to be completely wiped out causing the loss of all data on that drive.