serverph
Aug 16 2005, 09:19 PM
all of a sudden, you see, my loyal hard drive decided to retire about a week ago. i had to buy a new hard drive to replace it, and resume my computer tasks. my old drive is just lying around in my room after that, and i'm wondering how to at least get ahold of my files there (at least the most recent ones -- mostly downloads -- which i failed to backup before it decided to die down on me), if it's still possible. my old harddrive can't be detected in the bios, and it makes this clicking noise on boot up. i remember this hard drive freezer trick i read before, but i'm wary to try it on my own.  even if i can chalk it up to experience, i'm still scared on what will happen if i do. anybody among you tried this freezer trick? i want to have first-hand info from my peers in this forum, and not just those posted in some other sites claiming it does work. see, there is one who tried the trick and here are images of his attempt:   funny images, you see? obviously, that guy wasn't doing it right. what's your experience?
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bureX
Aug 17 2005, 03:39 PM
Hey, you've got nothing to lose! Besides, while doing it, you can take some pictures and post them here, or create a small "Freeze you HDD - HOWTO" page  You should try this: Put your broken HDD somewhere in your room so that it adjusts to your room temperature. Next, put your HDD in a plastic bag and place it in your freezer for a few hours (or overnight). While the HDD is "chilling"  , you need to prepare your existing system for the recovery process... Make sure that there is enough space left on your working HDD because you don't want to run out of it while you are copying all of your files! Also, try to copy the most important files from your damaged HDD first before doing the rest... Remember, this is a very time-crucial process! You can only do this a couple of times before the HDD finally stops responding even to this treatment! Read this before continuing. http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/664/7http://www.trisweb.com/archives/2005/06/15...-freezer-trick/PS: The worst thing that can happen is that the HDD doesn't get detected by the BIOS  But, the best thing that can happen is that you can get your data back! Good luck!
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Abhay
Aug 14 2006, 12:09 AM
Here are some drive recovery tricks that have worked for me, in the order that I do them. Try booting the drive and copying the data off after every step. 1. Hold the drive upside down, making gravity change the head geometry ever so slightly. Vertical is also another option. 2. Slightly rap the drive with your knuckle, (but nowhere near hard enough to damage the drive). 3. Try the drive in another machine, (slight drive voltage change assumed to be the miracle worker here). 4. Rap the drive just SLIGHTLY harder than you did above in 2. 5. Freeze the hard drive in the freezer for two hours, and place in a plastic zip lock bag to prevent condensation from forming on the drive when you plug it back into the system, (head geometry, electrical resistance lowered, electrical contact points adjusted, etc., assumed to be the miracle here). 6. After the drive warms up to room temperature or better, rap it even harder with your knuckle this time. 7. Repeat all of above steps on next day, as sometimes I've gotten data off drive simply by trying again.
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Moolkye
Aug 14 2006, 01:17 PM
That's pretty funny. I have never seen anyone take the "Freezer" trick to that level before. I wonder if it worked  Personally, if the data is not that important, what's the point? Just to do it? I have tried this, and I have to admit, it hasn't done squat. I don't know who came up with this idea, or if it is just a myth. Physics say that metal, cold or frozen condenses or contracts. Hence putting more pressure on the drive. It would be better to heat the drive up., freeing up and friction because the platters and all the metal would expand. But then that could also add more problems to and already bad situation. There is a way to copy data from a drive one bit at a time. But you need to get the drive to a bootable state. If this can not be done, I don't know of any app or trick that can fix that. That is why there are companies out there that make lots o money from data recovery. Just my opinion
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fffanatics
Aug 14 2006, 02:45 PM
The freezer trick works wonderfully. Yes, some problems with hard drives will not allow this trick to work due to it being a more mechanical issue rather than sector problems. However, we use it at work for every hard drive that dies (we have over 700 employees so there a ton of dead hard drives) and it has only failed me once in the past 3 months. Leave the hard drive in the freezer for atleast 1 hour. Then try to use it. If it doesnt work try putting it back in the freezer for few more hours and try again. If it still doesnt work, then you know its a mechanical malfunciton and dont waste any more time waiting for it.
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Zero Ziat
Sep 17 2006, 09:07 PM
But...That Hard Drive trick sounds REALLY crazy, wouldn't it do any kind of short circuit or something else? Those images left me actually clueless.
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t3jem
Feb 18 2007, 07:43 PM
awesome, I'm going to try this trick when my harddrive dies, sounds like it would work because when you freeze it the conductors are closer letting the electricity flow better, heating it up wouldnt work because if there is a crack or gap in the circuitry it will only make it bigger and prevent any data from being processed.
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PlugComputers
Feb 20 2007, 08:50 PM
Haha I have no idea how that would work. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ipods work using a hard drive like device to store songs. If I leave my Ipod in my car overnight or something and it gets really cold it actually works worse in the morning cold then when it warms up. It has a hard time switching songs/finding songs while cold, but after a few minutes of heating up it seems to work much better. This is pretty funny though, and you're right, you dont have anything to lose. Your hard drive is screwed anyways so why not try and freeze the damn thing. Haha. I wouldnt recommend leaving it ontop of your computer like that guy did though due to the fact that it will melt all over your motherbaord and stuff. Haha that wouldn't be too good. Worth a shot. Better try this rather than losing all your data.
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Galahad
Feb 26 2007, 08:15 AM
Heck, I would try it, if I had to... The way it works, in my understanding of electronics, and physics is: electrical resistance of a material lowers, the cooler that material is... That's due to a fact, that atoms move erradicly around, and the lower the temperature is, they are slowing down... When they are still (or close to a halt), that allows for more electrical current to pass trough, and the drop in voltage or power is lower... I'm sure I made an error somewhere in this text, but the principle is that... That's why this freezer trick won't work on mechanical problems... It may help bypass blown capacitor, or bridge some broken connection, but it can't fix any mechanical problem... In fact, it may even worsen it... But, since the drive is dead anyways, and I'm sure you don't have big bucks to take that hard drive to a company that rescues your data for a living, you have nothing to lose by trying this... Take some pictures, and make some proof of whether this works, or is just a myth... Maybe we should have Myth Busters try this?
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jtmcpherson
Mar 4 2007, 05:59 AM
dude i would totally go for it it's not proven to work but hey other people say that it works to just have at er'! you have nothing to lose. but i don't see why you would want to freeze your hardrive as most hard drives become un-operational below 10 degrees. thats why a computer wont run in the freezing cold. so i've heard.........
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iGuest
Jul 15 2009, 10:16 PM
Works only sometimes
Hard Drive Freezer Trick
This will only work if the electronic components go out. When that happens microscopic wires break and freezing them allows them to shrink and reconnect but as soon as it heats back up they disconnect again. This will not work for a clicking issue unless the clicking is not what caused the problem in the first place. Clicking is the head crashing into the platter because of an uneven surface. freezing will do nothing to correct that.
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iGuest
Jun 24 2009, 05:32 AM
Your ipod didn't work that well because it has a BATTERY. Batteries work better when warm and the loss of voltage has more of an affect than the increase in electrical efficiency that the cold brings. Liquid water getting in your ipod wouldn't make it slow, it would make it not work as it would be shorting circuits. Ice in your ipod wouldn't do much of anything until it melted.
I got a dead hard drive and am definitely using this method as soon as I get a new drive to put the stuff on.
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iGuest
May 7 2009, 01:16 AM
Hard Drive Freezer trick.
Hard Drive Freezer Trick
Just received a WD notebook ATA drive with a stuck spindle (sister's bf stepped on her laptop doh!). She had not backed it up like I recommended when I rescued it from a botched Vista SP1 update last time, so she faced losing all of her data.
I placed the drive in an aluminum USB enclosure that I picked up from newegg for $15 and popped it into the freezer for ~3 hours.. Bingo-Bango!
I'm backing up the data now with no errors. Didn't even have to leave it in the freezer and run the cable out to the counter.
Initially, I got the same "spindle is stuck" sound, but a couple of gentle taps on the side (NOT the top or bottom) were enough to unstick it.
My opinion: If the drive is toast anyway, why not give it a shot?
-reply by Chris T
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iGuest
Apr 9 2009, 08:58 AM
crashed hard drive with data recovery
Hard Drive Freezer Trick
I crashed a hard drive on my laptop. Bought an enclosure for the sick drive, used the program that I found online: Recover Data...About $50 found almost everything (around 95%of my original files) I am a happy camper! but this experience was stressfull! I learned a valuable lesson...BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP!
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iGuest
Mar 26 2008, 09:58 PM
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.
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