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Freezing laptop hard drive

J

joshc

Member
So my laptop hard drive started making a grinding sound and of course I can no longer boot off that drive. I am going to try the freezer trick but I have read of too many different ways of doing this. Some say put it in the freezer for 1 hour, some say overnight. How long should I throw the hard drive in the freezer for?

Also, if I put the hard drive back in the laptop after I take it out of the freezer, will the condensation that occurs do any damage to the other parts of the laptop?

Thanks.
 
The freezer trick will most likely not able to solve the grinding issue but it's worth a shoot. You are likely dealing with a physical platter disc surface scraping issue where the read head is making cuts/scratchs on the disc surface or possibly a bad motor/motor bearing. The freezer trick is still worth a blank shoot if the data is not important and the drive is overheating and appears to work when the drive is running cold but stops working after it warms up. However, every single attempt done wrong will cause more surface scrapes and makes it harder to pull the data off the next time. Recommends pro. service if you really need the data. Your drive is likely in need of a clean room read head swap operation and possible hard drive instrument operation; provided that the drive still IDs after a success head swap op. Good luck and you'll need it!
 
Originally posted by: Laputa
The freezer trick will most likely not able to solve the grinding issue but it's worth a shoot. You are likely dealing with a physical platter disc surface scraping issue where the read head is making cuts/scratchs on the disc surface or possibly a bad motor/motor bearing. The freezer trick is still worth a blank shoot if the data is not important and the drive is overheating and appears to work when the drive is running cold but stops working after it warms up. However, every single attempt done wrong will cause more surface scrapes and makes it harder to pull the data off the next time. Recommends pro. service if you really need the data. Your drive is likely in need of a clean room read head swap operation and possible hard drive instrument operation; provided that the drive still IDs after a success head swap op. Good luck and you'll need it!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm aware of the consequences but having the data would be nice, but not critical, and thus I am trying the freezer trick. Neither of you answered how long to put the hard drive in the freezer though!
 
30min-overnight depending on the condition of the drive and how good you seal the drive to prevent condensation.
 
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