Freeze your hard drive?

[Todd Holley]

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

 

Does it work?

 

I will tell you tomorrow sometime .

 

Figured I HAD to try this out since it sounds a little strange.

[jcroom]

Tried it before.... didnt work for me

[studeggle]

Yes it works, but not on all hard drive crashes. You can also use compressed air to super chil the drive without having to wait for the freezer.

[Todd Holley]

Well this crap isn't working for an old HDD I had and i need some files off of. It is sitting in a pot of ice, connected to the server with some stretched out power and ide cables. And it is clicking even louder now. I might end up sending it to one of the data recovery companies..... idk if some html files are worth at least 500 bucks though.

[Lane]

Well this crap isn't working for an old HDD I had and i need some files off of. It is sitting in a pot of ice, connected to the server with some stretched out power and ide cables. And it is clicking even louder now. I might end up sending it to one of the data recovery companies..... idk if some html files are worth at least 500 bucks though.

 

It will all depend on what is wrong with the drive, if you are having issues with the head, actuator or spindle, you may be able to get it working by cooling it way down or freezing it.

 

But if the issue is with the board, which is about 75% of the time, freezing isn't going to bring a burned out board back to life.

 

On the other hand, sitting the drive in ice most likely will not make the drive anywhere near as cold as putting it in a freezer.

 

You probably better off putting it in the freezer overnight and see if there is any difference and if there is, devise a longer term solution for data recovery.

 

As for sending your drive off and spending hundreds of dollars, if you google for shops in your area, you will most likely find one that does basic recovery for around 75 to 100 bucks.

 

As most HDD's die because of the board, data recovery is usually quite simple if they have another board that will fit your drive.

[Todd Holley]

Let me correct myself Lane. The drive is not dead, the data on it is just very "corrupted". It has 2 partitions. I have gotten everything off of one partition. But the smaller one (which has the data I want) was only viewed once. And when I tried to copy the files over it was VERY unstable. Made my whole system perform horribly (which I have never experienced before from a faulty hdd). Never the less I rebooted and did a chkdsk. It fixed a lot of problems and stated a lot of "sectors" are not available. Which sucks because I really need the files.

 

Note I was exaggerating on the price for data recovery. But it isn't going to be anywhere near 100 probably since I live in the middle of nowhere. (there are houses and towns all around, but not a computer shop for about 50-60 miles or so)

[studeggle]

Spinrite, I use it all the time for currupt data it can work miracles in data restoration on hard drives that have gone corrupt. I'd do it for you but a little to far away.

[Todd Holley]

Haha yeah, I don't think anyone on this forum besides justin croom is anywhere close.

[jcroom]

Atl

[{-SMAKU-}_MotorMouth]

Have you used GetDataBack, if the drive will spin it will recover the data? I use it when I need data off of a corrupt drive, it hasn't let me down yet.

 

http://www.runtime.org/