Hard Drive in the Freezer Trick

[badfish2]

Anybody ever done this successfully to temporarily rescue a damaged drive?

I have a 250GB SATA drive giving me some pretty unusual but consistent clicks, windows recognizes the drive but won't mount. I already tried cleaning the contacts on the drive circuit board, no change.

From reading about doing this, it looks like the drive only works momentarily as it begins to thaw out. Would I have a better shot at rescuing anything if I turn the drive on in a bag, in the freezer, connected via USB to a laptop? (after its been in for about 2 hours or so)

Thanks!

[Someday]

Never tried that one before. Tagged for future reference (got a few hard drives I need to rescue data from).

[kwansao]

from what i have heard this does not really work. you may be able to connect it to a computer for a minute and pull some small files off of it, but clicking usually indicates mechanical problems. if you have important files you should consider sending the drive to a data recovery service like drivesavers. plus you should consider the potential damage of condensing moisture on your sensitive electronic equipment. not that i know anything.

[Matt C]

That won't work, the problem is the gear connecting the motor to the plates has failed. It's possible if you can find the same model/production drive to switch the plates, otherwise I can recommend a data recovery place that will usually charge about $500.

[shootingblanks00]

I have done it numerous times and it does work...anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes is usually good. i've left them in for over and hour and it's worked then also.

[badfish2]

I can hear the spindle get up to speed fine without any unusual noises, the clacking doesn't start until windows tries to mount it so im guessing the reading arm isn't able to move full stroke. I'll give it a whirl tomorrow and see what happens, im at no loss really if it doesn't work

[wrestlingnrj]

I've done this successfully about 15 times, but I had to put the hard drive in a vacuum sealed bag and leave it in the freezer for almost 24 hours. At that point I had about 20-30 min to get whatever I needed off of it before it started to die again.

[Satex]

Maybe you guys should consider periodic backups and RAID arrays. Both are now priced within the realm of all consumers.

[Matt C]

I believe you guys but having looked at the guts of these broken drives I can't imagine how it is possibly doing anything. Also, you guys both had drives fail 15-20 times? That's quite a bit!

[blakdawg]

I have done it twice - have been building PC's since the mid 1980's.

It's not going to work on every failure - but it's worth a try if the drive is apparently otherwise dead.

[ulv]

I believe you guys but having looked at the guts of these broken drives I can't imagine how it is possibly doing anything. Also, you guys both had drives fail 15-20 times? That's quite a bit!

I thought that same thing, in the last 14 years I've only experienced one or maybe 2 hard disk failures.

[wrestlingnrj]

In the environment we have computers in at my work we constantly have hard drive failures. Managers complain because data is lost, but won't pay for recovery services, computers with RAID, or backup servers and then blame us (the IT dept). Out of about 800 computers we have, I'd say we get a hard drive failure at least every couple weeks.

[gorn5150]

I have had this trick work many times. But it is not a 100% fix. You can usually get the drive to work for 20 or so minutes before it chokes again. I spent the last 5 years of my career doing computer forensics for a taskforce so I had plenty of screwed up drives to work with. Not to mention the old 80 gig drives that had a real bad failure rate.

[badfish2]

Yeah I've been taking these apart when they die for a few years now - I collect the platters :-)

[Saigon1965]

That's pricey - Got a place around me that'll do it for around 150-200 -

That won't work, the problem is the gear connecting the motor to the plates has failed. It's possible if you can find the same model/production drive to switch the plates, otherwise I can recommend a data recovery place that will usually charge about $500.