Freeze your hard drive to recover data: Myth or reality?
About 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article about hard disk recovery that was quite popular (I received approximately 20000 hits for it). The article covered a couple of solutions to help you in the case where your hard drive would stop working. While I was doing some research for this article, I ended up on a few stories about people who were putting their HD in the freezer to help fix it long enough to be able to recover their data. I guess that by doing this, some metal parts in the HD could contract, putting back in place defective parts, and making everything work again for a few minutes. I removed the hard disk from the computer and sealed it in a ziplock bag to prevent condensation.
What do you guys think? Myth or reality? It seems that a lot of people agree that this solution actually works, so I decided to test it myself with an old Maxtor hard drive that failed me a couple of weeks ago. There was no important data on there, so losing the disk didn't really bother me.
Before putting it in the freezer, the drive was making a weird clicking noise, and the computer was showing me this message: Primary hard drive 0 not found, strike F1 to retry boot, F2 to run the setup utility
I finally installed it back in the computer, closed the case, and pushed on the power button.
Well, at least the hard disk spun for about 2 minutes before crashing again. Maybe that's not long enough to let me recover any data, but it worked for a little while. :)
edit: The day after, I shoved the hard drive back in the freezer for 24 hours. After getting it out, I was able to get 20 more minutes of life out it.
If you don't want to risk losing you data and are afraid to try this out, you can always ask experts to do the job for you. The folks at DTIData or at the Hard Drive Recovery Group can probably help you get your data back, no matter how damaged your drive is. Here are the specific pages on their sites concerning hard drive data recovery solutions:
And in the end, if you cannot do anything and need a new hard drive, Shopzilla has a great comparison engine that can help you find some very cheap ones.
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posted by Kiltak at
1/19/2006
204 Comments:
That weird clacking noise is a track 0 failure. Generally one platter in an IDE hard drive contains offset information (I'm not sure about scsi). By reading this platter the armature can tell where exactly it is in relation to the platters. When you loose the ability to read this offset platter for whatever reason, the armature will try to seek a specific offset and end up banging against the inside of the drive case as it seeks right past the outside of the platter, or track 0. Usually a very bad thing, but funny when it happens to somebody else ...
By
Anonymous, at 12:44 PM
Instead of booting off of it, get an external USB enclosure ready on a running machine. After freezing the disk, quickly plug it into the USB enclosure and power it up.
Get all the data you need off the disk ASAP. You might have to freeze the disk a few times before you get what you want, if you even can.
I've frozen disks in the past and have been able to get some data off of them. It doesn't always work - it depends on why the disk stopped working. I'm not sure why it works when it does, either.
By
Anonymous, at 1:22 PM
I've tried this as well, twice actually. The first time happend pretty much as you describe with windows loading and crashing.
The second time I was a bit smarter and used the ultimate boot cd to load upto a promp and copy the files I really needed over to a new drive as quick as possible.
By
Emerica, at 1:23 PM
One hour? Try waiting maybe four hours to let it get really cold, then try again. I have used this method before and it worked like a charm, my HD worked well for about 30 minutes before it died.
By
Anonymous, at 1:25 PM
Generally you don't try to boot off a frozen drive like that. See, it's not going to work for very long, so the idea is to copy as much data off it as you can as fast as you can.
So what you do is to put it in an external enclosure (since being in your computer will heat it up faster) and attach it to an already running machine. Then simply copy the critical data only as fast as possible. Sometimes you even want to make batch files ahead of time to copy the most important files first. You've literally only got minutes, but those minutes can be a lifesaver when a drive dies unexpectedly.
By
Otto, at 1:25 PM
Booting off a CD (WinPE, Barts, linux, take your pick) works as well. Of course, you need a USB drive to copy the files to, but who doesn't have one these days?
By
Anonymous, at 1:27 PM
If staying cold helps the disk, then will it work better if we run the harddisk in the freezer, but with wires stay connected to it?
I think this could help to keep the allowable recovery time longer
By
Leion, at 1:28 PM
well mabe if u leve it in the frezer with the wire runing in ther it will stay on longer so u caN get your data back got to try it
By
Dave, at 1:29 PM
If this works so well, why don't you guys just get an extra long cable or ribbon, encase the HD in a waterproof bag, seal the cable penetration, and submerge in iced water or surround with blocks of Co2?
By
Anonymous, at 1:35 PM
I've had some last 20 minutes up to 2 hours. I aslo had a bad laptop drive, took the laptop out side ( winter time ) and it worked fine too.
By
Anonymous, at 1:37 PM
I've never tried freezing an uncooperative hard drive before, but i'd like to make a suggestion. Instead of taking the drive out of the freezer and reinstalling it in the computer, install the drive in a USB enclosure and leave it in the freezer. Bring your laptop to the freezer and connect the USB drive and power it up. By keeping it in the freezer, you may gain a little more time to save your data.
By
Anonymous, at 1:37 PM
With long enough power and data cables, maybe you could leave the drive in the freezer?
By
Anonymous, at 1:38 PM
I tried this just a week ago with my PowerBook! Since it's a laptop, I had to leave the whole computer out overnight in sub-freezing temperatures, but it allowed me to have a working HD for about 10 min, enough to get the important stuff off!
By
ds, at 1:48 PM
It would seem best to use a USB enclosure and actually leave the HD in the freezer while the recovery is taking place.
By
Anonymous, at 1:55 PM
Harddrive recovery companies do this all the time. They generally have an IDE string running into the freezer as well as power. Then you just turn it on while it's frozen, grab your data and run. Another trick if your head is stuck is to hit the corner w/ a hammer. Fun fun fun!
By
Sage, at 1:55 PM
Hey I just had this totally unique idea that nobody has thought of before ever. Why don't you run a wire to the hard drive while it's still in the freezer?
How do I come up with these things that nobody could ever come up with I am the best.
By
John Cook, at 1:56 PM
I've used this technique successfully on two occasions. The first was the "clicky" type failure, and the second was an IDE that wasn't even spinning up. Got the data both times to a second drive in the system.
I learned to stand by the fridge (an office fridge) to avoid coworkers who felt it necessary to throw the drive away. eeeesh.
By
MuchAdo, at 2:03 PM
slightly ironic that your computer "froze" after putting in the frozen hard drive ;-)
By
Pharoah6905, at 2:04 PM
I wonder if it will help more to put the HD in the freezer overnight, maybe the cooler it is the better and longer it will work? can you retest?
By
Anonymous, at 2:07 PM
I have done this on 2 of my own hard drives and recovered all of the data. I have also been told first hand by 3 friends that they have done it and been successfull. I sudjest putting the drive in the freezer for at least 24 hours.
By
Clarke, at 2:11 PM
Try to keep the disk cool by putting it in an icebox or on a very cold enclosure. Maybe put a very fast and large fan next to it to keep it as cool as possible.
Heat kills hard drives, and recovering data from ice-cold disks is sometimes an option.
By
Anonymous, at 2:11 PM
Now you tell me this! I threw my old hard drive out a few week ago. Should have tried this...
By
Anonymous, at 2:20 PM
A close friend managed to "fix" a CDRW this way. Since it was dead to begin with, it was no great loss if it didn't work. But low and behold: It Works!
I don't recomend this for anything that you would be worried about damaging more, but if its already dead - why not try?
By
Anonymous, at 2:26 PM
To the guy leaving his laptop out in the freezing temperatures ... are you an idiot or what? That's a good way to kill your LCD screen. Also, the condensation from bringing the laptop back into the warm, considerably-more moist air could really screw it up too. Do this and you'll be replacing more than your hard drive.
By
Anonymous, at 2:28 PM
Now we can justify having a refrigerator in the tech Lab!!!!
By
Anonymous, at 2:32 PM
This really works if you catch the drive before it gets too bad. I used to work desktop support and we would leave the hard drive in the freezer over night. In the morning we would put it back in the pc or laptop and take an image. It was always funny to see a couple of harddrives mixed in with the frozen waffles.
By
Anonymous, at 2:38 PM
The reason that this works, is that when a head crashes it gets off center and will hit the pin the harddrive. Freezing it compresses it, allowing it to gain a little room to move where it wouldn't before.
By
Anonymous, at 2:40 PM
Yup, this trick was taught to me by my high school computer lab teacher, who was also the former owner of Priam, a defunct HDD manufacturer.
I was skeptical at first, but tried it, and it worked. I usually leave the drive in the freezer overnight, and leave it hanging out of the case. Then copy what you can quick and toss (or RMA) the drive.
By
Ian Eure, at 2:42 PM
By Chance, could the Curie point have anything to do with it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_point
By
Anonymous, at 2:47 PM
Yes, as I said on the original article on digg, it works in some cases. I used it as a last resort on a HDD with the same symptons you mentioned and it worked. I got about 30 mins read time for every 72 hours in the freezer.
By
Anonymous, at 2:52 PM
Why not set up your computer right next to your freezer and stretch the ribbon and power cables into the freezer while you do your data recovery... In other words, maintain the cold temperature while you work.
By
Anonymous, at 2:52 PM
I had an older Dell Laptop (1.1 GHz) and the hard drive failed spring 2005. The guy from our helpdesk took it out and put it in the freezer then reinstalled it. It worked! I thought he was joking when he said he put it in the freezer but he was serious. I was able to retrieve everything I wanted. I worked for about 2 hours then wouldn't boot up the following morning.
By
Anonymous, at 2:54 PM
if this works i'll be the happiest man alive
i swear it.
i will freeze my drive tonight and try it tomorrow
By
Anonymous, at 2:55 PM
You all keep talking about long wires to the freezer. I did this with a laptop HD...except I brought the freezer to the computer. I double ziploc'd the drive, put it in an ice bath, put the ice bath next to the computer, and used a ribbon and power cable out the side of the case to hook it up. It ran long enough for me to copy off ALL the data. (60GB)
By
Anonymous, at 3:11 PM
Ive been doing this same procedure for years! Ive been a tech for almost 15 years now and every time I have a failure I freeze my drives. There have only been a few times I was unable to recover data, and seem to be more electrical than mechanical issues.
By
Custommx3, at 3:17 PM
Another idea for those that don't want to string cables into their freezer would be to obtain some dry ice and sit the drive on the dry ice and hook it up to an open chassis computer. Of course, let the hard drive sit in the freezer first for a goodly amount of time to get it nice and cool first.
Though I have not tried this, I bet it runs longer too.
By
Anonymous, at 3:18 PM
I had something similar happen with one of my drives, it wasnot working at all and I tried everything including opeinging the drive in a "clean" enviroment and then what fixed it was getting the drive good and cold and then insterting it into the system. after it got going, it would work for days and then I just had to freeze it again and it would work for a while longer.
By
Anonymous, at 3:20 PM
I managed to SAVE 2 HDDs from the trash can. I used the Trial ver. of HDDREGENERATOR
from http://www.dposoft.net/ .
This app really repaired some crucial bad sectors (usually the 1st on the HDD). After that I used the Mfctr (IBM) app to "Erase"=Repair but Data Recovery was possible (I didn't have to). I am using both HDDs now and SMART status is just fine.
By
Ancient1, at 3:23 PM
For the love of god peope, it's "LOSE" not "LOOSE"
By
Anonymous, at 3:35 PM
Having watched hard drives go from "out in the car" in an Upstate New York winter and into a computer and then die in minutes, I can assure you that hard drives are like windshield glass.
They really really don't like to go from cold to hot in a hurry.
By
Anonymous, at 3:35 PM
Gosh, Can't believe I didn't find this article. It would of been a great help for fixing my maxtor external.... Too bad I beat the crap outta that drive with a hammer already... or at least tried. The external casing I swear is semi bulletproof.
By
Anonymous, at 3:36 PM
Put it in the external usb enclosure, and stick it in the freezer, run the cables out the door and plug it in, leaving the HD in the freezer :)
By
Anonymous, at 3:37 PM
I actually got this to work myself. After getting the drive dripping wet from condensation a few times, even after putting it in a bag to freeze it, I got out my old dorm fridge, cranked it up and ran the power and ribbon cables out through the magnetic refrigerator seal.
It worked great.
By
Anonymous, at 3:39 PM
I tried this with an old BASIC IV minicomputer back in 1985, on a drive that was one of the old cartridge types. Put the drive in my car in the winter, let it sit for a while, brought it back in and loaded the disk back into the drive and was able to recover the data long enough to updgrade the machine to a new system.
By
Anonymous, at 3:53 PM
Hey guys,
I'll put it back in the freezer for the next 24 hours, and report back the results.. maybe 1 hour wasn't enough. If it's colder, it'll probably run for a longer period.
By
Kiltak, at 3:55 PM
I want to try this, i have a bunch of crappy hard drives lying around that i can do whatever i please with. can i force a failure? like hitting it with a hammer perhaps, so then i can try this freeze thing
By
Anonymous, at 3:57 PM
I'm a Systems Admin at a shipyard. I always thought the idea of freezing a hard drive to make it work was a joke. Then I had one crash and despite what tools I used on it, it was unreadable. Someone reminded me of the freezer trick, which I tried as a last resort. After about an hour, I was able to read the drive and clone it. It saved me a few hours worth of reinstall and data recovery pain. -Scott Maynard www.cashewraffle.com
By
Scott Maynard, at 4:01 PM
Not all hard drive failures are the same. Google for the model number of your Maxtor -- I had a problem with my wife's a few months ago, and it appeared to be some sort of firmware-related issue, so I couldn't get it to mount in any drive utility.
On the other hand, my PowerBook drive started acting strangely 2 weeks ago -- occasionally it would just spin and sping, and then it didn't want to boot. It seemed to be worse when the machine had been in use for a while, and I couldn't keep it working long enough to get my data off.
Enter the coldpacks. I put a coldpack on the wrist-rest, above the hard drive, and another below, and was able to get all 52-odd gigabytes off the drive.
By
Frank Steele, at 4:13 PM
Often hard drive failures are a result of overheating.... placing a heatsink / fan combination from an old cpu can often help the drive run long enough to recover information off of it.
http://www.technorants.com
By
Anonymous, at 4:32 PM
i used to work at a print shop doing graphic design where one of the scssi drives would periodically not boot. the owner of the place used to heat it up with a heat gun for about a minute, and then restart....after that, it would boot and run fine. also the drive was fine until you shut down. dont know why this worked, but it did. i thought it was really weird.
By
Anonymous, at 4:56 PM
Time for a new monitor.
By
Anonymous, at 5:00 PM
I froze a drive then blasted it with a heat gun and encased it in carbonite. Incredibly, my data was recoverable!
By
Anonymous, at 5:02 PM
Put it in a usb enclosure, use a long cord to the computer from the freezer. Boot up the pc from there.
Chad
cohman.blogspot.com
By
Chad, at 5:11 PM
I've tried this solution may times before. This freeze solutions it help you only to backup your data it does not repair the HDD. We should thanks the physics for making this freeze thing work
By
Taco, at 5:30 PM
I have used the frozen drive trick a number of times, it works like a charm. On one occation, a friend of mine had his hard drive chipset catch on fire from a short. He asked if there was anything i could do.
I recomended since the drive was new enough that he might try ordering one with the same model number from newegg and then swaping the hard drive controller card. He did and he is still using that composite drive today.
By
jdavid.net, at 5:39 PM
next time take your drive & pc to the artic and get a solar panel for power oh and a sat link to the internet and vnc to it whenever you need to view any data on that drive. you shouldnt use a freezer cuz they waste energy and we need to love our planet more and maybe some girls too. peace bro.
By
zeroflake, at 5:45 PM
Don't put it in the freezer, that's just silly. Instead get a cold pack (like mentioned above) or if you don't have one, just get some frozen bags of peas or other vegies and put them in a zip lock bag and sandwich the drive between them. This also works well on external LaCie (or other brands) metal cased drives.
By
Anonymous, at 5:46 PM
It spinned? heh
By
Anonymous, at 5:49 PM
I've used this technique several times over the years. You should boot to another drive if possible or at least be ready to copy the data to another drive as soon as it comes up. Leave it in the freezer for at least 2 hours. You can wrap the drive in a towel with a bag of ice (or dry ice if possible) to help keep it cold longer. You can usually get about 20 minutes out of it before it craps out again.
By
Anonymous, at 5:52 PM
You should definitely do what I've done many times: put the drive in an USB drive enclosure and keep in running in the freezer while you recover the files.
Sheesh, I thought everyone knew that! :)
By
Anonymous, at 7:23 PM
In 12 years of Tech work, I have used this technique as a last resort for datat recovery, and it has worked almost every time ( 12/14 times) but yeah, copy data off it immeadiatly, external nclosures are cheap nowdays and easy to use, double bag the drive and freeze for minimum of 4 - 6 hours.
I reccomend, but f your down to this, consider the data lost, anything recoverable is a bonus.
By
Jason Hall, at 8:32 PM
For improved runtimes you can also try using a USB to IDE cable rather than an enclosure, with just the cable you can apply an ice pack. We've done this with a reasonable degree of success in the service shop where I worked. The USB to IDE we've had best luck with is by Cables to Go
By
Anonymous, at 8:35 PM
You are supposed to freeze it for much longer, 1 hour isnt enough to really shrink the plates so that the head can read from it, its been highly reccommended for at least a day or few days, or many even do a week. Give it a shot, and try to recover your data.
By
Munjal Thakkar, at 8:39 PM
The reason this works is simple - integrated circuits sometimes partially fail, and if you can keep a chip cold enough it will still work. Putting a drive in the freezer only helps if you have a *partially* fried chip on the board.
By
Anonymous, at 9:33 PM
okay lol first of all, placing the Hard Drive in a plastic bag does not prevent condensation. You need a Vacuum atmosphere to prevent condensation..
bah i won't even bother to say anymore..
By
Anonymous, at 10:27 PM
True but arn't some HD's completly sealed? I've always wondered why all HD's are not sold with the inside in a vacume.
"okay lol first of all, placing the Hard Drive in a plastic bag does not prevent condensation. You need a Vacuum atmosphere to prevent condensation..
bah i won't even bother to say anymore..
"
By
Anonymous, at 12:39 AM
my god I hope this works for me !! I lost ALL of my pictures from our Myrtle Beach family vacation to a dead hard drive. I had JUST downloaded the images from the laptop to the HD (this was before I had an external DVD-R Drive) and accidentally did a MOVE instead of a copy - once done I took the HD upstairs to burn the images using my main machines DVD-R and thats was it clickity clickity :-( I was NOT happy one little bit. I cant afford the $800+ they want for data recovery so I have kept the hard drive in a protective static proof case since then (4 years ago) in the hopes of one way affording the recovery service fee. I am going to give this freezer trick a try and see if I get lucky. I only need 5 minutes 1 minute to spin up and access 3.5-4 minutes to copy my pictures. I could care less about anything else on the drive I just want my pictures !! now where the heck did I put that thing...
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/
By
Chris Taylor, at 1:22 AM
Any advice for a drive that won't even start up?
Also I have lost loads of memories over the years but I put it down to beer. The wierd part is I have been freezing the beer ...
By
Hubbers, at 4:20 AM
Still trying to recover clients data from IBM Hdisk.
This should be an important lesson to folks...
** holds up sign **
BACKUP YOUR DATA WEEKLY!
** puts sign down **
Nuff' said
By
Astrotrain, at 4:52 AM
Well, my Hard drive recovery experiment ended up fairly well, after 24 hours in the freezer, the drive ran for 25 minutes, long enough for me to recover the data.
Great ;)
By
Kiltak, at 12:35 PM
the easiest way to make the 30 min window before the disk thaws out last longer is to bring the freezer to the hard drive after freezing as has allready been described get a small igloo fill it up with ice and water and salt (the salt lowers the meltimg point so it makes it colder) and then get a ziploc bag and set it in vertically with the cables coming out of the top of the bag and tape it to the side of the igloo to where no water can get in and the hard drive will work all day long or at least until you run out of ice
By
Anonymous, at 2:50 PM
I think I won't try this at home :)
By
Refik, at 5:12 PM
if you need a vacuumm environment, seal it with somthing like a seal-a-meal
By
Anonymous, at 10:13 AM
I tried this for the first time ever tonight on a 40-gig hd that was making the click-clank sounds. I let the drive soak in the freezer for about 4 hours. It was put in an internal-to-external drive converter and I kept the drive in the freezer during data extraction. It didn't work at first. I tried all the jumper settings and it worked when it was on cable-select mode. I banged it a few times b/c it was still clicking. Even after banging it, it still made noise. I nearly gave up hope and then on it's own while still in the freezer after 3-4 minutes the thing stopped clicking and I could read all the data I wanted off the drive.
Thanks so much for the tip!!!
By
Anonymous, at 1:04 AM
I have a 250gb Lacie external that just stopped. period (no wierd clicking or anything). Any chance this could work for it?
By
Anonymous, at 3:20 PM
Hmm, I don't think so. Is it spinning? It's probably an electrical/power issue, but I can't say for sure. It isn't making any noise at all?
By
Kiltak, at 4:45 PM
I tried this freezing at the request of someone who had heard this. I put it in and forgot about it. After two days when I remembered it I stuck it in a machine and low and behold it worked. It only worked for roughly 20 minutes but I was able to retrieve the data I needed. Too COOL!!! No pun intenteded.
By
Anonymous, at 8:35 AM
I tried this freezing at the request of someone who had heard this. I put it in and forgot about it. After two days when I remembered it I stuck it in a machine and low and behold it worked. It only worked for roughly 20 minutes but I was able to retrieve the data I needed. Too COOL!!! No pun intenteded.
By
Anonymous, at 8:37 AM
It's "losing", not "loosing".
And "spun", not "spinned".
By
Anonymous, at 12:45 PM
I have an awesome idea! You should leave the hard drive in an enclosure, and leave the enclosure in the freezer. Then, you can run a long cable from the enclosure out the freezer and plug it into your computer!
By
Anonymous, at 4:07 PM
Thanks for the corrections. My native tongue is not english, so my text isn't always 100% error proof.. even then, I'm not that bad hey? :)
By
Kiltak, at 7:55 PM
There's only one reason why this works: there is a vacume in the hard disk and sometimes dust particles get in the drive. By putting it in the freezer, the dust sticks to the surface. You're disk wil stop working again as soon the temperature is back to normaL
By
Anonymous, at 12:19 PM
Not sure who has said this. I had a Dell hard drive crash after the clicking noises for a while. I saw somewhere that it's "stiction" (sp) where some of the platters actually get fused together or something like that. They are made of different materials so they expand/contract at different rates when subjected to temperature extremes, so the hd works again, for a while. After a few days of freezing and extracting data with a usb enclosure, I got all the data off and sent the hd back.
Sorry for any repetition.
By
Anonymous, at 2:43 PM
Okay, since it is clear nobody can read the replies before posting - let me say the same thing 85% of you have repeated already:
How about get an external usb drive, and leave it in the freezer? Maybe you'll get more time!
D'oh!
By
Anonymous, at 5:08 PM
I back up my data regular
By
Anonymous, at 7:14 PM
I have done this so many times. I live in the rocky mountains, so leaving it outside is also fine. Also I can run the machine outside and keep it freezing cold. In the winter months of course.
By
DFragmentor, at 9:18 PM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Piscesburning, at 10:57 PM
I tried to not get my hopes up, but it seemed like fate or something. A while ago my hard drive had burned out, the same day I was planning on backing up all my important stuff. I thought about it today for the first time in a while and then just happened to see this article on torrentspy.com.
I put the hard drive in the freezer for 5 hours but every time I hooked it up to my computer, it just wouldn't start. The fan would twitch as if to spin, but that was it. I tried putting it in by itself, as a slave, pretty much every combination. I switched cables around to make sure it wasn't a connection issue, and nothing. The computer boots with the drives I have right now, and even when there is no drive, but the moment one of the power cables is connected to the problematic drive .. nada. Zip.
I am in the process of picking (at random pretty much, because I have no idea how to find the best one) a data recovery place to bring this to. Before that happens and I spend money I don't have, I thought I'd give it a shot and see if any wise good samaritans could offer some advice. Maybe there's something I can still do myself?
Thank you and please excuse the length of this comment and my please-help-me-ness.
By
Piscesburning, at 11:04 PM
Any tried and true geek with experience with bigfoot HDD's knows the freezer trick and for some scientific reason, (a career-path I chose NOT to follow) it works.
hooray freezers.
I'm serious.
By
Syron, at 11:38 PM
DUH....Has anyone ever thought about leaving it in the freezer in maybe, I don't know, a usb enclosure? That would be a GREAT idea!!!!!......some of you ppl have permanent ID ten T errors!!
By
Anonymous, at 10:29 AM
Please guys, I need help with an external LaCie 250gb usb drive! It just stopped working, 6 weeks after I bought it. Now XP doesn't even recognize the drive. Any ideas?
By
Anonymous, at 8:42 PM
did you try installing it on another computer? If it's working on another computer, then the drive is fine, if it's not, then the problem is with the drive, and you'll have to get it back to the store for a refund.
By
Kiltak, at 10:24 PM
If you think the freezer works good...try putting it in the oven at 275 degrees and then it will work for up to 2 hours after....
By
Anonymous, at 1:58 AM
This does sometimes work, I have done it.
You are best using a deep freeze for at least 24hrs. Once done i sat the drive in between 2 freezer blocks and ran ghost on the drive. The drive ran for about 30mins which gave me plenty of time.
Unfortunatly it only worked the once for me so don't go making promises.
By
Anonymous, at 4:35 AM
Looks like most of the anonymous contributers are FARKERS.
By
Anonymous, at 8:49 AM
I've been receiving tons of traffic for this article through shoutwire, a lot more then what I should have got normally, probably someone who blogged the article through shoutwire.. Anyone can point me to the source?
Thanks.
By
Kiltak, at 2:11 PM
For those of you who think hard drives have vaccuums, they don't.
If you put a hard drive in a vaccuum, it's going to crash.
The heads float on a cushion of air created by the spinning of the platters, hence the reason for the little holes on the hard drive enclosure.
By
Hobofuzz, at 6:49 PM
To Kiltak - Don't know if this helps, but I found the link under "most popular" here: http://www.torrentspy.com/
By
Anonymous, at 9:03 AM
Well, one of my harddrives just burned out this wednesday... And God damnit I'm gonna try it!
If I can keep it near point zero, maybe I can get my collection of designer pictures back!
By
Anonymous, at 8:43 PM
I had two Maxtor HDs die in a month. Freezer trick didn't work for either of them. Fug Maxtor.
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