SATA, IDE, Freezer trick

[1sikbITCH]

Click click, click click, click click.



GG harddrive.

On the other hand, I'm proud of my wife. She heard the clicking and ran to get me right away Hopefully I shut it down in time.

I have about 45 gigs of stuff on there that I'd really like to have back. I just ordered a Seagate 160 GB SATA drive, and when it comes I will attempt to get what I can before it goes for good, if it hasn't already.

I just need to know, do I just put the harddrive in the freezer for a while, pull it out, and go? How long? 30 mins? Overnight?

Also, while I'm here, am I going to be able to run both my 80 GB IDE and the SATA drive on the same board? I have a brand new A7N8X-E Deluxe with onboard SATA controllers. If it comes to it, I can put the 80 GB on another system on the network.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Well, I see from another thread that I can use them both but I should probably leave the IDE drive as the boot drive. The other guy can't get his mobo to boot from the SATA.

 

[LuDaCriS66]

When my gf's hard drive died, I popped it in the freezer wrapped in a sandwich bag for an hour... put it back in the computer and it worked. I backed up anything important before it died again

seemed to work well

 

[Luthien]

Nice idea and why the hell not when you figure it is hosed anyhow and your desperate, lol. My second HD on my second system started that clicking yesterday and today it died. I ignored it because it usually clicked at least once or twice everytime I rebooted with it for the last year. It just did it a few more times and booted slower. When I purchased 6 Maxtor HD's about 2 years ago three out of six where clicking and two wouldnt boot. I RMA all three and get back three working but two clickers. I RMA two and get back two clickers so I decided !@#@$# it and keep them. One of those just died. Good thing they have 3 years! I am making it a point not to purchase any new HD without three year warranty. BTW maxtor is now doing advanced replacement! FINALLY! I hope Western Digital does advanced replacements since I am switching over to all WD drives when I get a raptor in a few months.

 

[0roo0roo]

im pretty sure they do advanced replacement from what i remembe. i hope so, my boot drive is failling smart....bah. fails to boot half the time, pretty sad.

 

[TheBoyBlunder]

Make sure you wrap it in a plastic baggie to avoid condensation. I'm not sure how long you should do it for...an hour, maybe?

 

[shiftomnimega]

Wow, very enlightening post.

Who would have thought... recover date from a hard drive by freezing it.

How the heck does it work?

 

[thorin]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1001551&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=arc

More info here:

200 Ways to Revive a Hard Drive
If you don't have a Tech Republic account use:
UID: at2001@my.net
PASS: at2001

Thorin

 

[lansens]

Who really know how or why it works. I've heard of this for several years. From what I've read it seems to me like its a 50/50 chance it will work.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Nice, thx for the links and the posts. If I can find this link when the time comes, I'll report back if it works or not.

 

[MiniDoom]

Thermal contraction, and if that doesn?t work as a last resort try dropping it.

 

[shiftomnimega]

Dropping it, eh...

Yeah, there are some things that can only be fixed with brute force. Like a sledgehammer.

 

[MiniDoom]

hammers make great media format tools, for old hard drives of course.

 

[Need4Speed]

i still dont understand why people dont buy a second drive and mirror their critical data. HDD's are so cheap these days that cost shouldn't be an issue. Hell, you can get a 120gb drive for 60.00 bucks after rebate. i know my data is worth many times more than that if i lost it...then again all of my pcs get rsync'ed every night. I always have at least 7 days worth of data available if i need it.

 

[n7]

I can't believe that freezer trick works so well! :Q
If my IBM Deathstar evers dies, i'll be tryin' that, even though i don't keep much data on it.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: n7
I can't believe that freezer trick works so well! :Q
If my IBM Deathstar evers dies, i'll be tryin' that, even though i don't keep much data on it.

I found it hard to believe - until my Notebooks' HD "died" . . . about 15 minutes in the freezer - let it thaw and then USE. This trick worked for WEEKS until I finally got VISA to honor their extended warranty .. . .

 

[EeyoreX]

i still dont understand why people dont buy a second drive and mirror their critical data. HDD's are so cheap these days that cost shouldn't be an issue. Hell, you can get a 120gb drive for 60.00 bucks after rebate. i know my data is worth many times more than that if i lost it...then again all of my pcs get rsync'ed every night. I always have at least 7 days worth of data available if i need it.

Because a majority of users are not that savvy to install a hard drive themselves. Because software still does not make it easy. Because a hard drive "mirror" isn't all that much of a real backup anyhow. There is more to consider than just cost. People really should be backing up onto at least one type of removable media and storing it off site. You say your data is valuable, but what happens if, heaven forbid, your home goes up in smoke? Is the data important enough to be offsite? I understand that it is less likely your computers will go up in smoke than a "simple" hard drive failure, but the point is the same. Backup is still not easy or convenient enough for most users to bother.

\Dan

 

[0roo0roo]

ecause a hard drive "mirror" isn't all that much of a real backup anyhow.

no i believe its quite real for protecting data against drive failure. it might not protect against user stupidity, deleting their own sh*t by accident or installing viruses but really... u can't do anything about stupidity really. but mirroring is well, effortless if preinstalled.

but yea, it does cost more, raid cards cost more, and users aren't going to pay more until they've suffered loss.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Luthien
Nice idea and why the hell not when you figure it is hosed anyhow and your desperate, lol. My second HD on my second system started that clicking yesterday and today it died. I ignored it because it usually clicked at least once or twice everytime I rebooted with it for the last year. It just did it a few more times and booted slower. When I purchased 6 Maxtor HD's about 2 years ago three out of six where clicking and two wouldnt boot. I RMA all three and get back three working but two clickers. I RMA two and get back two clickers so I decided !@#@$# it and keep them. One of those just died. Good thing they have 3 years! I am making it a point not to purchase any new HD without three year warranty. BTW maxtor is now doing advanced replacement! FINALLY! I hope Western Digital does advanced replacements since I am switching over to all WD drives when I get a raptor in a few months.

well i just did an advanced replacement with wd just now

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX

i still dont understand why people dont buy a second drive and mirror their critical data. HDD's are so cheap these days that cost shouldn't be an issue. Hell, you can get a 120gb drive for 60.00 bucks after rebate. i know my data is worth many times more than that if i lost it...then again all of my pcs get rsync'ed every night. I always have at least 7 days worth of data available if i need it.

Because a majority of users are not that savvy to install a hard drive themselves. Because software still does not make it easy. Because a hard drive "mirror" isn't all that much of a real backup anyhow. There is more to consider than just cost. People really should be backing up onto at least one type of removable media and storing it off site. You say your data is valuable, but what happens if, heaven forbid, your home goes up in smoke? Is the data important enough to be offsite? I understand that it is less likely your computers will go up in smoke than a "simple" hard drive failure, but the point is the same. Backup is still not easy or convenient enough for most users to bother.

\Dan

well, I'd say that a daily mirror is certainly better than nothing for most people. Just the fact that your data is duplicated on a physically different drive reduces your chance of data loss dramatically.

That's not to say that there are not even better solutions, as you suggested, including offsite storage, but at least they would have a copy if the drive failed. And let's face it, most post here are in regards to drives crapping out and "oops I deleted my partition", not my house burned down and I lost my data.

1. Everything else you mentioned are just petty excuses. Anyone can have a hard drive installed at one of a million computer service shops for a reltively small fee ( when compared to having a failed drive rebuilt).

2. Most backup software for the home user has wizards that even my grandmother could follow. Mirroring doesn't necessarily mean RAID. There are much more simple solutions available.

3. Removeable media, yeah that would be great too, and further decrease your chances of a data loss. My point was howerver, that most people don't even put forth the effort to implement the easiest solution ... ie adding a second drive.

4. And maybe its not convinient, but is it convinient to put your drive in the freezer? or to for over a couple grand to have the data removed? I doubt it.

The real problem is that people most people don't know the value of a decent backup solution until its too late, then they are annoyed that the hardware failed. The average consumer assumes that the hardware wont fail, when they should be assuming that the hardware will fail...its just a matter of time. Not everyone has to make quadruple copies of their data and store them in a back vault.

As far as my solution is concerned, i do store backups offsite, but I consider myself above average user.

 

[1sikbITCH]

I don't have any critical data to backup.

With that said, losing 45 gigs of DVD rips will still suck, and I have considered purchasing an extra drive to back it up.

My buddy just got a big settlement and bought me a DVD burner since I already ordered a hard drive. Now I can at least burn my more important stuff.

 

[Need4Speed]

sounds like a good solution to me

 

[1sikbITCH]

Got some good news, and some bad news.

Good news, my hard drive is fine.

Bad news, it's my brand new Asus A7N8X E Deluxe. Ran great for 3 days, and so I thought it was just a hardware change that the hard drive didn't take too kindly to and decided to quit. Mobo is dead now, and packed up for RMA. I knew something was up when the second harddrive started making funny noises and hanging. I tried both hard drives in my wife's pc, and they both are good to go.

Good news is I got to buy a 160 GB SATA drive. Guess I've got my back up drive now