Anyone have you tried this? Save a Failed Hard Drive in Your Freezer, Redux
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1.) Remove the hard drive from the computer.
2.) Place the hard drive inside of a zip top freezer bag. (don't buy a
cheap bag.)
3.) Place the wrapped hard drive inside of ANOTHER zip top freezer bag.
(yes, you need to do this)
4.) Place the double wrapped hard drive in the coldest part of your
freezer.
5.) Leave the hard drive in the freezer for 12 hours at least. You want
it good and cold! (see figure 2 below)
6.) Once very chilled, install the hard drive in your computer and
start pulling off data. Begin with the most valuable data.
7.) At some point, the hard drive will fail again. When it does, mark
the last successfully copied data, pull out the hard drive, double wrap
it again and stick it in the Chill Chest for another 12 hours.
8.) You may need to do this a number of times to get all the data you
want, or until the hard drive stops working completely.http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux
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That gets done by people on Spiceworks pretty often. I prefer to take backups, though.
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It's an old trick. It works a fair amount of the time. It's a last-ditch-effort move though.
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@Joyfano Just confirming that this does work, but it should only be done as a absolute last resort. I've only ever had about a 70% success rate with this method, and haven't had to do it in many years. Last time I think was in early 2007.
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Don't EVER do this after you've physically opened up a drive though. Dust gets inside, and moisture, and then sticking it in the freezer is a big no-no.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@Joyfano Just confirming that this does work, but it should only be done as a absolute last resort. I've only ever had about a 70% success rate with this method, and haven't had to do it in many years. Last time I think was in early 2007.
Oh Thank You sir. I was thinking it is pretty cool
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@ajstringham
LOL, why would anyone want to try to do that? -
@DenisKelley said:
@ajstringham
LOL, why would anyone want to try to do that?I've seen people try to "fix the head" by opening it. Don't ask me...
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Done it back in the day when I had windows 98. I take backups now.
This won't work with SSDs of course.
What it does is it shrinks the bearings in the motor that move the platter so it can free up temporarily and move again. It doesn't usually last a very long time just enough to get some data.
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Was this purely hypothetical or are you about to try putting a hard drive into a freezer?
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Just to chime in if it's something you really need to save; get an IDENTICAL PCB board off of eBay for $15-30 and swap it out. You'd be surprised how many times it's the hard drive PCB error and nothing mechanical. Just check their return policy before you buy, can usually just pay shipping back if it doesn't work out.
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@MattKing I've heard of that.
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@technobabble said:
@MattKing I've heard of that.
Same here. I've heard of boards going bad but the platters and head are fine.
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I heard a hard drive making some noise today. I thought of this thread
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@technobabble @ajstringham Yup, sometimes the "clicking" or start/stop is just the motor or head getting improper signals. The boards are very sensitive to ESD damage. Same for memory modules causing BSOD and system halts; a lot of time it's just because someone handled them incorrectly.
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@MattKing I've seen a lot of newer Harddrive cirucits and even some PCI cards coated over with Clear coating, It's called conformal coating and it covers all the comments leads so there is little chance of ESD shock with them.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattKing I've seen a lot of newer Harddrive cirucits and even some PCI cards coated over with Clear coating, It's called conformal coating and it covers all the comments leads so there is little chance of ESD shock with them.
That's really interesting I'll have to look into that. I wonder if it's becoming more of an industry standard or just some OEM's.
