Head crashes are a nightmare for anyone who cherishes their data. These disasters occur when a hard disk's read/write head collides with its spinning magnetic platter, causing severe damage to the drive. Fortunately, there are ways to describe this catastrophic occurrence that sound slightly less frightening than "head crashes." A few synonyms for "head crashes" include disk crashes, disk failure, hard drive crashes, drive failures, system crashes. Regardless of what term you use, it's vital to keep backups of your data in case the worst happens.