Freezer for a knacked hard drive?

[Fandango 1,440]

yes or no? Whaddya think?

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/f...cover-data.html

About 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article about hard disk recovery that was quite popular (I received approximately 20000 hits for it). The article covered a couple of solutions to help you in the case where your hard drive would stop working. While I was doing some research for this article, I ended up on a few stories about people who were putting their HD in the freezer to help fix it long enough to be able to recover their data. I guess that by doing this, some metal parts in the HD could contract, putting back in place defective parts, and making everything work again for a few minutes.

What do you guys think? Myth or reality?

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

The condensation inside, would cause a dead short and possibly take out your whole machine. Never would I do it!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I believe you can do it, and have read about it in a number of PC magazines - but its an extreme last resort (i.e. drive goes into the trash once you're done).

[Fandango 1,440]

The condensation inside, would cause a dead short and possibly take out your whole machine. Never would I do it!

What about makin sure the baggie is airtight and all that jazz?

I believe you can do it, and have read about it in a number of PC magazines - but its an extreme last resort (i.e. drive goes into the trash once you're done).

Got any other ideas then?

[SMOKE 1,426]

nice siggy Lisa

[Ban Hammer 14,286]

yes or no? Whaddya think?

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/f...cover-data.html

About 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article about hard disk recovery that was quite popular (I received approximately 20000 hits for it). The article covered a couple of solutions to help you in the case where your hard drive would stop working. While I was doing some research for this article, I ended up on a few stories about people who were putting their HD in the freezer to help fix it long enough to be able to recover their data. I guess that by doing this, some metal parts in the HD could contract, putting back in place defective parts, and making everything work again for a few minutes.

What do you guys think? Myth or reality?

had something similar happen - in germany it was about 40 outside and the harddrive on my comp went tango uniform - was able to get all the data off of it only after dropping the temp about 40 degrees. taking the data off took about 3 hours, with the temp at 80 in the room it would only run about 5-15 min before hard drive error showed up.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

The condensation inside, would cause a dead short and possibly take out your whole machine. Never would I do it!

What about makin sure the baggie is airtight and all that jazz?

I believe you can do it, and have read about it in a number of PC magazines - but its an extreme last resort (i.e. drive goes into the trash once you're done).

Got any other ideas then?

Not really. The drive has to be pretty knackered in the first place to even consider that.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

The condensation inside, would cause a dead short and possibly take out your whole machine. Never would I do it!

What about makin sure the baggie is airtight and all that jazz?

Got any other ideas then?

My job is in the electro mechanical field.The Baggy really doesnt have anything to do with it.Baggy would just keep water from dripping on the other components. When the H.D. starts to warm up, it will create condensation inside and outside the device essentially putting water all over the components. The H.D. is connected to the power supply of the computer and the mother board, water and electricity aint to be messed with. Call some reputable computer outfits and see what they can do for ya.

[Amby 490]

I asked my uber nerdy friend and he says believe it or not that does work he has used it once before

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

have you ran check disk?

[Dan J 277]

It will probably work, kind of. Considering the heads hover over the platters just a few microns above it, material contraction from the cold might lift it up just enough.

But if any parts of the platters are damaged already, that data will be unrecoverable.

Your much better off devising a backup plan and sticking to it. Use something like MozyHome for automated remote backup.

If you do ever loose a drive with very important data, you can call these guys: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/. They can recover data from damaged hard drives, assuming its not really badly damaged. But it will cost you alot.

[DeadPoolX 9]

Lisa, putting a hard drive in the freezer can work, but it doesn't have to work. It's basically a ####### shoot at that stage of the game. You'd be far better off backing up your data onto CD-R/CD-RW (or whatever form of DVD writable media they're using these days; they keep changing them, so I can never keep up!), USB flash drives or best of all, an external hard drive.

External hard drives are usually USB 2.0 (that's okay, since you'd be hard-pressed to find someone with USB 1.1 nowadays) or even in some cases, firewire. If you're interested, here's a 500GB external hard drive for $109.95 with free shipping, but if that's too expensive (or you don't need an HD quite that large), you could always try a 320GB external hard drive for $84.95 with free shipping as well. These two come from Buy.com and if you'd like to look closer, here's the external hard drive section on Buy.com itself.

[Fandango 1,440]

Yeah well I'm fixing the barn door after the horse has bolted, I'm afraid.

Desktop is NOT booting up...thru the short attempts D has had to diagnose the issue, it seems the hard drive is shagged. We'll be going thru it more tomorrow as our schedules might match up long enough to see if he can remote-fix it...but at this point, all our piccies are gone

It boots the windows startup screen, but then goes to the 'failed to boot' screen with the option to go into safe mode, etc...but none of the options work. Tried BartPE, and once you click on the C drive, it fails to expand, and it just stops responding. I suppose next is to remove the hd, slave it to another & then try to read it that way...but there's no way I'm doing that without him

My IT girl at the office yesterday told me about the freezer, so I was looking into it today.

I also have a 2 gig mem stick, and a 250 gig external hard drive that I've never used. foooooooooooooooooooooooooock.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I gotta question, how the hell do you get that pumpkin lit?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yeah well I'm fixing the barn door after the horse has bolted, I'm afraid.

Desktop is NOT booting up...thru the short attempts D has had to diagnose the issue, it seems the hard drive is shagged. We'll be going thru it more tomorrow as our schedules might match up long enough to see if he can remote-fix it...but at this point, all our piccies are gone

It boots the windows startup screen, but then goes to the 'failed to boot' screen with the option to go into safe mode, etc...but none of the options work. Tried BartPE, and once you click on the C drive, it fails to expand, and it just stops responding. I suppose next is to remove the hd, slave it to another & then try to read it that way...but there's no way I'm doing that without him

My IT girl at the office yesterday told me about the freezer, so I was looking into it today.

I also have a 2 gig mem stick, and a 250 gig external hard drive that I've never used. foooooooooooooooooooooooooock.

Better than me - my P4 laptop failed a couple of weeks ago. I don't even get the system bios - which pretty much means the motherboard is toast, and consequently a new PC.