Success rate on HD freezer trick?

[dowxp]

my maxtor died while copying with a sudden clicking. sniff. i want my data. ironically, it was my backup drive... just that.. there was some stuff i didnt have on my main drive. i usually dont backup my backup drive =(

any other tricks besides the freezer trick? maybe dropping it?

 

[Megatomic]

Did you try freezing it yet or are you just looking for some alternatives just in case the freezing technique doesn't work?

I used the freezer trick on my dead Maxtor a few months back. I got my stuff off the drive the day before I sent it back for RMA. I was SOOOOO happy to say the least. :beer:

 

[dowxp]

its in the freezer right now. how long did you leave it? if it doesnt work, i'd like other methods before RMA'ing

 

[dowxp]

what was your maxtors ailment? was it the arm clicking?

 

[Megatomic]

I only left it in the freezer for about an hour. While it was chilling, I prepped my system for action by having the case open, an IDE and power connector ready and a foam pad for the drive to rest on. When the moment came, I powered down, grabbed the drive out of the freezer with a glove on (so my skin wouldn't warm up the drive), connected the drive FAST and booted up. Thank god WinXP boots up so fast. I got Windows to recognize the drive and selected all the data on the dead drive and began the mass transfer.

There were touchy moments during all this. I heard a click or two while the PC was booting up and more than a few while the data was transferring but in the end I got my mp3s and other "stuff". All in all I saved 32GB or so.

 

[dowxp]

hrm... was there condensation action? what if water formed on the circuitry?

 

[Megatomic]

My drive clicked alot and then died. It just stopped being recognized by the BIOS and Windows, and this only took about 2 days total. Stupid me, I had SMART turned off in the BIOS or I would have had more warning. When I heard the first click I turned on SMART and immediately I received SMART warnings in the Event Viewer.

Get this, on the bootup that the drive finally died on, I was booting up with another new drive installed to backup all my data onto. How ironic, eh?

 

[Megatomic]

I didn't notice any condensation actually. When my drive failed it was winter time and not very humid in the house.

 

[dowxp]

hehe. i think smart never helps me. hrm, im in houston, but its still hot here. poop. oh well. imma go out to buy stuff. i'll report on my sucess\failure later tonight. thanks for the info

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Bangsailio
hrm... was there condensation action? what if water formed on the circuitry?

Lots of people have reported this method to work so it can't be that big of a problem...

 

[Megatomic]

NP, GL Bangsailio.

 

[FFactory0x]

I heard of the freezer method but what does it do?

 

[Megatomic]

My guess would be that it extends the amount of time you have before the drive stops working. If the drive is bad due to a bearing overheating and seizing up then freezing it will give you an extra few minutes before this occurs (it will take longer for the bearing to overheat from 32F than it will from 72F). As a result, if you have your ducks in a row then you have given yourself enough time to copy any valuable data that is about to be lost for good. That's my most plausible guess.

 

[dowxp]

boo, it didnt even get past detection. poop.

 

[dowxp]

i'll try again overnight. condensation was everywhere. the higher the humidity, the more water that comes out =(

 

[0roo0roo]

gonna go raid next time?

i guess the freezer trick has about the same success rate as the drop kick towards a bed/couch trick can't hurt if its fux0red.

 

[dowxp]

no money for raid. i'll probably just wait for teh RMA.

 

[ChefJoe]

Heh, reminds me of my trying to revive a 2 gig laptop HD a few months back. Didn't work. :-(

 

[Noriaki]

The freezer trick only works for certain kinds of drive problems, there are some drive problems that are just one shot dead drive, no retries, no failsafes.

If you've got a blown actuator or a dead read head ... ead ead ead...ack... then you're sorta screwed (although technically a single dead read head is only going to lose part of your data)...but there are some hard drive problems that are heat related, and if you can get your data off quick before it overheats you are in good shape, hence the freezer trick.

But not all, and I would say not most (though I'm not an engineer so I can't say for certain) drive problems are heat related.

 

[Megatomic]

Sorry it didn't work out for ya Bangsailio. I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Are you losing any truly important data? I was going to suggest a data recovery company but it costs and if you don't have the money for RAID then you probably won't be able to swing the dough for the recovery.