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The freezer trick?
I was at a forum for one of the games I play. They currently released a beta and I am helping everyone sort out their hardware based issues. Someone needed to get get some information off their hardrive which is bad. He asked if the freezer trick might work. I have heard about this but haven't tried it or told anyone to use it because it dosen't sound like a good idea to put a hardrive in the freezer. Is this like a last resort thing to do, and how would a freezer help get info off a bad harddrive?
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I've used it before with a Fujitsu drive. It had a dodgy chip on the circuit board that played up when it got warm, so freezing allowed more time to retrieve data.
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These articles explain that, and a number of other tricks as well:
200 ways to recover a hard drive (PDF)
hard drive revival
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Thanks for the help. He does own a Fujitsu drive. I'll post the links for him as well read over them myself.
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I have tried the 'freeezer trick' as well in the past. As you said it's prettt much a last ditch effort. It won't resolve the drive's problems for long but it will provide a window of opportunity to retrieve data.
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Ummm............ What if it gets freezer burn:D Ok, he is going to do it and see if it works. Hopefully it will.
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I've done it many times, mainly with Fujitsu but also other drives. I've managed to get full disk images off with Ghost and sometimes just certain files. I've also had them running long enough (and still working) that there's condensation forming on them. Its very worthwhile to try and works in many cases. I've found that 2 days in the freezer works best. The last one I did was a Fujitsu and the platter wasnt spinning at all. Tried swapping the circuit board, no go, still no spin. 2 days in the freezer, plugged it in and got a full disk image using Ghost.
The ideal way would be to run cables to a drive still in the freezer. It's something I may try yet.
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Hi Shadow 1, thats not too far fetched an idea, there is a guy in Wollongong ( NSW AUS ). He has a small computer repair business next door to a butcher. As he tells it freeze the drive then pop next door put the box in the butchers deep freeze rug up then come back in 10 mins, wack in the frozen drive and he swears it very often works.
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I've recovered some very lucky people's data from time to time but I never let on that it can be done. If I'm successful then I give them their data and tell them they got extremely lucky. I rather enjoy that terrified look on their face when I ask the question, "you do have a backup, right?"
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I've known of that trick, but never tried it. I did manage to pull some data off a Fudgsicle once though....
