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Well, a physical crash can occur in one of many ways. The heads are held over magnetized metal plates spinnig at several thousand RPM. This creates a cushion of air between the heads and the disk surface. One way that many drives fail (one of the most audible) is that something happens to cause that air cushion to dissipate. The heads physically crash into the disk surface, shredding it on a molecular leval and eradicating data as the disk (literally) screeches to a halt.
Other problems can occur, a motor can burn out, a connection can break, the mounting hardware that holds the individual disks inside the drive can break and let the disks wobble out of control, crashing into the inside of the casing (it's happened to me.)
Someitmes, the data can come back, sometimes not. I burned out a motor, and successfully transplanted the data disks into another drive that had physical damage. If the heads crash, which I'm guessing is what happened, you probably have no hope.
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