Definition: Head crash


A head crash is the damage caused by the heads coming in contact with the magnetic surface of the media (platters). The crash causes damage to the read heads and scratches in the magnetic coating. Data that was stored in the scratched area cannot be recovered. Shavings and dust from one head crash may cause crashes on the other surfaces.




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Data Recovery Fact

Cluster

Cluster is a basic allocation unit on a hard drive. It is a group of contiguous sectors. The cluster size (number of sectors per cluster) varies with the storage media and is fixed at time of format. At least one cluster is allocated to each file, regardless of the file's size, that is stored in the DOS environment.

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