Hard disk recovery - the freezer trick.
June 15th 2005
It wasn’t actually a virus that infected my mom’s hard drive, but some bad chips were overheating and causing everything to go haywire. The problems I had on my drive (that I tried to boot it with) were probably because of scrambled signals on the IDE line or something like that.
I’ll get to the point: we found a way to read the data, and remarkably well too. According to several places on the internet (which I always trust) you can put the hard drive in the freezer for a few hours to make it cool enough to copy some files (and it turns out this actually works). Rinse lather repeat until you’ve got everything.
That was a bit slow for us. We had to copy a 350MB MS Outlook datastore (don’t get me started) and it was overheating and failing before it could finish. So we came up with this:
A hard disk, on the rocks. It’s triple-bagged inside a bag of ice, and we had to press the ice up against the PCB side of the disk to keep it going. It would error as soon as we took the pressure off.
It’s hard not to laugh — it actually worked! Combined with Knoppix, we copied all the important files to my 20GB iRiver (which automounted; did I mention the new version of Knoppix is awesome?). Tomorrow we’ll figure out a better solution, probably including dry ice, to try to get the less important things off (pictures and music).
My hard drive is fine (not the failed one, but caught a bug from the one that did), I just have to rebuild the partition table. Checked in Knoppix and the data is still good. So all ended well. Just remember the freezer trick 
NICE!
My current laptop’s hard drive turned into a maraca (literally - you could hear it rattling!) within a week after the computer first arrived on my doorstep. Unfortunately mine was too far gone for the freezer trick, but the tech support guy DID tell me that it worked on things like overheated hard disks. And then he told me never ever to tell my warranty people that I tried it.
I love these kinds of computer issues. The solutions are always so crazy!
Seriously. I couldn’t believe what we were doing, even though it made perfect sense.
I can’t imagine what we’ll come up with tonight. Probably some crazy heatsink and dry ice combination, or maybe liquid nitrogen. Or maybe not liquid nitrogen. Whatever. I’m sure we’ll come up with something cool.
Ha! I didn’t even mean that as a pun…
[...] Yesterday, in a last-ditch attempt to save my hard disk, I put it in the freezer. It’s an old trick - you stick it in the freezer, the parts inside it contract, and then expand again, in theory loosening up whatever got stuck in the first place. I figured I’ve give it a shot. Took it out this afternoon, plugged it in while still cold… nothing, the disk was still clanking away and not reading correctly. Sigh, my disk is dead then, I thought. However, tonight, I thought I’d give it one more shot, now that the drive had heated back up to room temperature… and it worked! that old trick worked! The disk is still working happily now, which leaves me with a bit of a problem. I can’t send it back when it’s working nicely… I’m leaving it on tonight. “Hopefully” it’ll die again. I don’t trust the disk as it is, seeing as it blatantly could die at any minute. (I did read one story the other day of a guy who put his hard disk in the freezer. It continued to work then for over a year). If it still works after a week or so (using it for “safe” things like watching videos - no new data on there), I’ll buy another 300GB HD, RAID-1 the two of them, and hope it all continues to work. I am VERY glad to have my data back now, anyway… a better backup scheme is in order, I think! Whee! [...]
[...] se siitä. Tiedossa on että tämä “Freezer trick” perustuu oikeasti jotakuinkin siihen, että teorian mukaan hajonnut komponentti saattaa [...]
If you’re going to try this on a drive that contains data that you REALLY need, I’d recommend wrapping the drive in paper towels, then in a ziplock, then sucking all of the air out of the inner ziplock. After that, you can freeze it or place it in another bag full of ice if you wish.
Condensation is the enemy with this technique.
If you’re unable to recover the data, again suck the air out of the inner ziplock, then leave the bag out until the drive has reached room temperature. This way, all of the condensation is on the outside of the ziplock, and you’ll still be able to send the drive off to a recovery company if you have to.
Personally, if the data is worth the price, I always recommend data recovery services.
Thanks Kelly, you’re absolutely right on all counts. The trick is not to get any of the electronics wet or condensed whatsoever.
We used three bags, like I said, just to be safe. Originally we had put the drive in the freezer for a couple hours, but we had to get so much data (the huge Outlook datastore) that the drive warmed up before we could get it. Thus, we had to bring the freezer to the computer
An alternative would be dry ice. I think you’d still have the condensation problem though, so multiple bags are a necessity. If you have a vacuum pump, use it, otherwise suck as much air out as possible.
It only works in some situations, but it’s incredible that it works at all sometimes.
Hello all,
Always great to be part of a collective group.
I have a Hitachi Travelstar 80GB in my laptop running XP. It started with overheating a few months ago.(I would run my computer with intense CPU/HD usage, from video, sound rendering) It would overheat then, then restart. As long as I am not running anything intense, it is okay. I installed a temperature monitor to gauge the temps.
Eventually the HD would begin to click and knock every so often. I wish I knew that that was a bad sign. I thought I was in the clear and the problem was it overheating. Then while in usage the knocking became constant and shut down. I tried to reboot and it didn’t recognize the data. The bios recognized the drive, but that was it.
At this point, I was worried for my data, I researched online to look for solutions. I saw the freezer method, the flashing the firmware on the HD method, the swapping out parts with a identical HD method, and of course the costly data recovery.
Before I did anything, I got all possible methods available. I tried the freezer method(1 hour and 2 hour freeze times), to boot up and also in an external enclosure. Both failed, still with constant knocking. I tried the firmware flashing, but could not put the HD into safe mode so it would not spin up. And the swapping of parts, I didn’t want to waste 100 bucks on another drive to have it fail. I think I could have done it without a clean room, but it was too much of a costly risk.
A few questions if you could. How did you use Knoppix to solve this? Do you think it would help me? Is there any thing other than what I described that I should try? In a last resort, any ideas on a good data recovery service?
Much Obliged,
Sincerely,
Steev “In parts”
Hello Steev, I’ll provide a quick reply…
Unfortunately if the freezer doesn’t help, I don’t know what else to try. It has a very slim chance of working, and only in a few situations. The problem could be elsewhere, or too severe, or anything.
I mentioned Knoppix (or any Linux) because it did a better job of reading the hard disk than Windows — if Windows finds problems with the disk, it often freezes and doesn’t let you read the drive, even after “the freezer trick” or other methods. Linux is much more fail-safe and can usually read a drive if it’s remotely possible.
In today’s world I’d recommend Ubuntu, as Knoppix is a little outdated. You can boot Ubuntu from a CD, then attempt to read the drive from there. If that doesn’t work, then it’s likely a severe problem that will require data recovery.
If anything, you will learn from this: Backup backup backup, then backup again. Good luck.
the trick is hilarious!!!!
ma frd Got astonished !
the flash disk is dead bt i will try this trick
i will inform you if i succeed
thex man !