A malfunction within the electronic circuits of a chip or the electromechanical components in a computer system's disk drives or tape drives. Recovery from a hardware failure requires the physical repair or replacement of the defective part.
Intermittent Failures Are Hard to Diagnose
If hardware fails intermittently, it is very difficult to debug. The problem has to exist in order to be diagnosed. However, when one thinks of the billions of tiny transistors within a chip, it is a wonder that the hardware is not failing constantly. See
chip. Contrast with
software failure.