200 ways to revive a hard drive (Freeze It)

[shine_on]

Web site Tech Republic presents a failed hard drive challenge to its tech support readers. One way to resuscitate the busted drive long enough to get a backup? Stick it in the freezer.
on top three are Freeze it, drop it and hit it.

I found most interesting and somewhat effective freeze it, so i link it here from page two, but you can check them all.


Link

 

[cateye]

yeah, ISTR it helps it stay cooler longer if it's overheating, and changes the lubrication viscosity. It only fixes a limited range of problems, but its worth a try.

 

[aussie7]

Yeah, I used the freeze method ages ago (like 6 years ago) and it worked. Grabbed all my old games from the hdd.
I wonder if it would work on the newer hdds with more clusters and different interfaces. (like SATA)

 

[cateye]

Since its a mechanical/physical method, it should be the same for all magnetic hard drives that use the spinning-platter method (not that I'm aware of other magnetic ones that don't). Its a basic and brute-force way of dealing with overheating or friction problems, but anything more sophisticated becomes exponentially more difficult with HDs as the user would have to open it up in a clean room (a "cleanroom", not a room that is clean) and start changing out components.

If your HD is in trouble, and you don't have incriminating stuff on there, take it to a data recovery place....if you have the cash, do that first, before the freezer trick, in case trying the HD again could make the data unrecoverable (read: HD explodes, overheats, a big internal collision/scraping, etc)

 

[aussie7]

Since its a mechanical/physical method, it should be the same for all magnetic hard drives that use the spinning-platter method (not that I'm aware of other magnetic ones that don't). Its a basic and brute-force way of dealing with overheating or friction problems, but anything more sophisticated becomes exponentially more difficult with HDs as the user would have to open it up in a clean room (a "cleanroom", not a room that is clean) and start changing out components.

If your HD is in trouble, and you don't have incriminating stuff on there, take it to a data recovery place....if you have the cash, do that first, before the freezer trick, in case trying the HD again could make the data unrecoverable (read: HD explodes, overheats, a big internal collision/scraping, etc)

I used to know someone that used to recover data from hard drives for a living. He charged like $100-$500 depending on who was asking and he could do it in like 15-30 mins.
He was saying that the most common reason of hard drive failure is a little bit of dust inside the hard drive.

 

[wrhex04]

i've used the fronzen harddrive trick for years. works great, but you usually get a max of 30-45minutes at a shot before having to freeze it again... so it's still not perfect, but if it gets the data off a damaged drive and costs nothing, then there's no reason to complain.

 

[redhat1999]

using SMART monitoring software to watch the HD status and it give hint what problem has happen to the disk

 

[cursed]

better than to throw it away after it got damaged :klatsch_3: