How Does this Process Work ?

Physical Crash

When a hard drive is making ticking or scratching noises due to old or worn out parts, it can lose the data contained within. The read / write heads in the hard drive can fail; failed motors are common; or the platters on which the data is stored can become damaged.
Physical damage can also be due to mishandling of the drive or circuit failure of the PCB board which is attached to the hard drive. Physical damage to the disks itself always causes at least some data loss. And, in many cases with physically damaged hard drives, the logic structure of the file system may also get damaged. Any damage of this sort constitutes a physical crash of a hard drive.