1. n. A sudden, usually drastic
failure. Most often said of the system (q.v., sense
1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what
happens when the air gap of a hard disk collapses). Three
lusers lost their files in last night's disk
crash.
A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping
onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be
referred to as a head crash, whereas
the term system crash usually, though
not always, implies that the operating system or other software was at
fault.
2. v. To fail suddenly.
Has the system just crashed?
Something crashed the
OS!
See down. Also used transitively to
indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both).
Those idiots playing SPACEWAR crashed the
system.
3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long hacking run; see gronk out.