Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'Freeze a dead hard drive to copy its data' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Freeze a dead hard drive to copy its data
Authored by: TheBlockster on Nov 03, '06 09:08:49AM

Last year I had a client bring me a laptop with a clicking hard drive. I ran all sorts of utilities on it and NOTHING worked. After many hours and about half a bottle of scotch, I rethought what was happening. The read/write head was hot, or the platters were hot. How could I get the internal components to shrink and come apart? High school physics taught us that cold makes things smaller.

I developed a GREAT method using the freezing idea. I put the drive in a bag in the freezer overnight, but when I took it out, I figured that as it heated up, it would build up condensation. I used an external drive case and a bunch of processor fans I had lying around and built a "recovery enclosure". The fans will dry off any condensation as the drive was put to use.

Without waiting for the drive to warm up at all, I just plugged it in and everything worked perfectly. I recovered the entire drive to my machine, then transferred all the data to a new drive at my leisure. Then I wrote a letter to my old physics professor and thanked him for helping me look like a miracle worker.

I've used this method professionally and am happy to say I have over an 80% success rate!

Three cheers for thinking outside the box!!



[ Reply to This | # ]