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Freeze a dead hard drive to copy its data
Authored by: johnsawyercjs on Nov 07, '06 06:54:21PM

I should add: don't get the hair dryer too close to the drive, since the EMF from the hair dryer might interfere with the drive's electronics.

If one cycle of cooling and/or heating doesn't allow the drive to run long enough to recover its files, try several more cooling and/or heating cycles, letting it rest for a while, etc.--if you keep at it, sometimes a bad drive revives just long enough to let you copy the crucial files--grab them first. Sometimes after a cooling and/or heating process, if you just let the drive sit at room temperature for a while (several hours or overnight tends to be best, in my experience anyway), the drive sometimes revives just long enough to allow you to copy the files. Sometimes it runs just one more time after a round of cooling/heating, and never again no matter what you do, so have your backup drive running at the same time, ready to receive the files!



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