does this trick really work???

this trick is freaking me out, this is unusual, there is a lot of data recovery software you can buy out there that let you recover your data but that would be expensive, if this trick really work then i think it will be great, you can have your data back without losing money. anyways i don't have a broken harddisk so i guess i won't be needing this trick .

I've researched this with a lot of hard disks I purchased for the experiment.

I Discovered the following:
If the motor driver chip is fractured (It won't spin up)
You can indeed help by freezing the drive.

HOWEVER, you stand a chance of condensation with this method.

a shot of freeze spray will do the same trick without as much danger to your platter. (You can turn a can of dusting air over to become freeze spray.)

I do recovery for a living and DO NOT RECOMMEND this method if you care about your data. The chip can be replaced by desoldering and resoldering a new chip on the board with better success.

I have a cooler bay I use to hold the drive and keep it cool during transfer.
This is a steel cage you screw the drive down in that has 8 pizeo electric coolers & cpu fans attached to.

This keeps the drive cool and extends the time you have to pull data off.
(Heat is your enemy for sure)

Again, If your data is important to you and you wish a professional job,
Seek professional services.

-CoreDataRecovery.com

hard drive freeze
Hard Drive Freezer Trick

I have been having a problem with my hard drive in an external usb enclosure. I had tried everything and had heard about freezing it.

I was very concerned about putting it in the freezer so I did the next best thing,I put it outside. It is a very warm 32 degrees right now. I let the hard drive "chill" for about an hour and now no problems!

-sparkette27

The freezer trick is a funny story. It has been said to work and Personally It did not exactly work. Stuck it in a freezer bag to prevent condensation and put it in the freezer for about three hours or so to cool it down. I had read somewhere that the point of the freezer trick is to cool off the components on the board of the drive. If the components get cooled off you MAY get lucky and your drive may work for a couple of mins until the chips and components warm up again and it stops. This may be just enough to get your information backed up. My suggestion would be to try it What do you have to loose. Also if you do get it going again dont waste any time back up your stuff immediately because this is not a permanent fix. Good Luck

Replying to PlugComputers
Thats because your ipod had condensation (water in it) so you had to wait for it to warm up, hence the need for a plastic bag when you put your hdd in the freezer. The hard drive trick works, and works well. Also on the stubborn ones, you can put them in the oven on about 250, then put the in the freezer for an hour.

Replying to serverph

Don't Freeze it into ice like that, just put it in a ziplock bag, get all the air out you can and then freeze it. Quickly take out the drive and put it in as a second drive in a system...Use something like linux or perhaps norton ghost with -FRO (you need something that can ignore bad sectors if there are any as your time is limited)

broken laptop HDD - how to recover data?
Hard Drive Freezer Trick

My laptop hard disk endured a shock a few days ago. It worked as normal for about a day, but a slight whirring noise was noticeable when the laptop was tilted. This got gradually worse, and it eventually got to the point where the whirring was a lot more violent and sounded as though the disk might have been scraping (or perhaps slipping on the spindle?) Later that day the hard drive would not stop the violent whirring noise, despite being on a flat surface, and the laptop bluescreened. When I attempted to restart the machine, the laptop would not boot from the hard disk. No more whirring was heared, but the HDD fault icon appeared on the Toshiba boot screen. I tried taking the drive out, re-inserting, but this did nothing. I could hear a normal quiet whirring when I put my ear to the drive, but I could not boot from the disk. I replaced the hard drive with a spare, and installed a fresh copy of XP onto the spare drive, and the laptop is now working fine, however I am very keen to recover my data from the old drive. I have read several reports, all suggesting different data recovery techniques, but I am not sure which to try. I have purchased an external USB caddy for the drive to try to recover files from it, however I'm not sure if there are any precautions I need to take first. The freezing method sounds promising, however I am worried that if I use this it may just make the fault worse (I have read that this can damage the protective film on the disk platters). Perhaps I should try using the dive in the external caddy before freezing it? I am aware that the fault in the drive must be mechanical because of the sounds being produced as the drive was dying, so if data is recoverable, I may only have a limited recovery period before the drive becomes completely unrecoverable. I have also read about daisy-chaining it with a healthy hard drive, and using FDISK to make a copy of the contents. This is not going to be simple, as it is a laptop hard drive, however I will attempt this if it is the best way to go about data recovery. My guesses are that either the internal spindle has come loose as a result of the shock (as was suggested by a professional) or that the drive has endured a head-crash. Either way, when put back into the laptop, no irregular noises are heared, just the normal quiet whirring that it has always produced (yet the HDD failure icon still appears on the screen). I would be most appreciative of any suggestions or advice, because the data is quite important and very irreplaceable. Thanks in advance.