A crash, or hardware malfunction, occasionally occurring on a computer's hard disk in which the read/write head—which is normally supposed to "float" above the surface of the disk—collides with the surface of the disk. The results of this can range from simple data loss to more severe hard disk damage. Head crashes are commonly caused by some kind of contamination such as fingerprints, dust particles, etc. A head crash is one particular variety of a more general disk crash.
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