No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.
That is just plain wrong. The entire point of HD wallets like Electrum is that the entire thing can be restored using only the 12 word seed. So, if OP's "PASSPHRASE" is 12 words... and he was using Electrum a simple wallet restore is possible.
It all depends what wallet was being used tho.
Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.
Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.
It's just an executable written in python.
https://electrum.org/#download