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Freezing a HD actually worked

Elixer

Elixer

Lifer
You know, I thought this was more or less a gimmick / joke.

It just happens that one of my HDs made a click of death noise, it was in a dormant system for a few weeks, and it just wouldn't get recognized by the system when I finally turned it on, nor a external USB device. I tried a few different systems, and each couldn't see it.
I did already have a backup, so I wasn't too worried when this happened, so I threw it in the chest freezer (0F) for a few days, and today, I got it out, and tested it, and it actually started working again.

I then did a byte compare of the frozen HD with my backup, just to find out how long it would last, and after 6 hours it still is going strong. Did a few power cycles, and it gets recognized by any system I have tried it on.
SMART is worthless as usual, both before & after the freeze.

From what I can tell, it happens because of overheated metal parts that have expanded. Not really sure if this is true or not, since AFAIK, the HD never reached a temp that is over the safe limit, and is usually around 38C.

Anyway, just thought I would share this. 🙂
 
Nice to hear but I wouldn't trust that drive as far as a two year old could throw it.

In fact I've used that trick several times to salvage data off dying drives for customers.

One trick is to run a long IDE & power cable to the drive and put it in a ziplock bag in the freezer overnight. In the morning pull the cables out but leave the drive in the freezer. Hook up to a system, crank it up and grab the data. I've seen about a 50% success rate and made a few people very happy.
 
That worked for me before also. I already had a replacement drive, there was no way I was going to keep using the drive after I got everything I needed off it.
 
Yeah, I was planning on using the drive as a scratch drive. Or perhaps I will take it apart. I think some recovery places might buy the circuit board and or the HD itself.. hmmm
 
It works as well as baking dead graphics cards... as in sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I've had it work before on one drive.
 
I've only tried the freezer trick on one drive, so my success rate using it is 100%.
The 80GB WD is still working today, several years later.
 
It isn't recommended if the drive contains critical data. You can actually make the data unrecoverable by freezing the drive then plugging it back in. A better method is to remove the pc board and freeze that, then reinstall it. Alternatively you could also put the pc board in the oven like done with graphics cards. Usually the reason this works isn't because of any mechanical failure in the drive. It is the board separating from the fingers that connect it to the heads or chips on the board with bad joints. The first problem with the fingers requires nothing more than removing the board screws, taking off the board and then putting it back on, that helps re-orient the little connections.
 
The only point of freezing a disk is to recover as much data as possible from it before throwing it away.

That said, it does work. My success rate (in that the drive was bootable) is 100% for 3 out of 3 drives.
 
Some quick notes:

1. Put it into a plastic bag to keep out as much moisture as possible.
2. Leave the hard drives in the fridge preferably overnight before taking them out. Make sure to wipe off excess moisture.
3. Don't bother trying to boot off the drive. Plug it in and boot off of a boot CD (something like BartPE) to immediately start transferring onto backup media. Better yet, put the hard drive in an external enclosure and slap that into the freezer. Power it on only when ready to transfer.

If it fails in the middle, you could always stick it in again. But the probability of success diminishes with the number of times you do this. I had to repeat this 3-4 times for a 250GB failed external before I managed to get everything off.
 
Originally posted by: jimhsu
The only point of freezing a disk is to recover as much data as possible from it before throwing it away.
Click to expand...
That's exactly the point. 😉
All the hand-wringers out there that are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on data recovery should avoid the freezer and ship their drives directly to a data recovery shop.

 
Just tried it on a 500Gb Seagate FreeAgent Desktop after reading this thread yesterday - no go. Still the same 3 second repetitive "click" once you jack in the USB & no device appearing within My Computer.
 
Sadly it didn't work 🙁
Will keep it in the fridge for a few more days and try again, but I doubt it will help.
 
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