Users who Dugg This
datarecoverygeek
28 Followers
Miranda Williams
4 Followers
David GIlks
51 Followers
RonHoward22
20 Followers
midoriginJan 19, 2006
No luck the only time I tried it on a clicking laptop drive. Only froze it for two hours though, which may not have been enough.
hozezeroJan 19, 2006
^^thats why you should use a plastic bag
jessejJan 19, 2006
Jesus saves. I make backups.
Closed AccountJan 20, 2006
"Spun" not "spinned".
joshszJan 20, 2006
I've done this before, it's worked every time on drives that start making clicking noises
alceriaJan 21, 2006
My one-month old harddrive died in my new laptop and I stuck it in the freezer and then set it up as a slave on my desktop. I was able to get some important files off it but it died when I got to transferring my photos. I hadn't put a lot of photos on this harddrive, but I did have a couple folders worth of good concert footage that was lost.Nothing is worse than that tell tale clicking of a dead drive. :(
webcompanionFeb 9, 2006
Didn't know if this would work... but I bought an internal-to-external hard drive converter (hooked up to it via USB) and went to work. The 40 gig drive I had that was making a clicking sound sat in the freezer about 4 hours prior to doing the following stuff.At first I powered up while the drive was in the freezer and it didn't work, so I tried changing the jumpers from cable select to slave, then slave to master. Still no luck. Changed it back to cable select and heard the drive clicking. I started to whack the drive against the inside of the freezer, somewhat gently. It still continued to click... but for some reason after about 2-3 minutes more Windows started to try and autoplay the drive. It was scanning all the directories on the drive for an autorun.inf which I then cancelled and went to work. I managed to get all the critical data off the drive with what seems to be no data transfer errors. Amazing! Super ++++helpful digg!!!
the4starishMay 27, 2006
OK so here's the story. Last night I set up my comp to download some episodes of "Lost" on Bit-Torrent. This morning I go to check the progress and its completely frozen. Buttons do nothing. I do a manual power cycle and I hear the hard drive try to start up and then nothing. No clicks, ticks, beeps or sounds. As a matter of fact, the screen doesn't even light up. I take out the drive and boot up and the bios come on. I put the drive back in and back to nothing. I was about to give up and take it to a repair shop or something but then I fortunately stumbled upon this by searching on google. Then I read like 4 posts and said screw it, I'm trying it. So I put my 80GB Hitachi Travelstar Notebook hard drive into the freezer in some zip-lock bags. I come back to read what the rest of the posts say and someone warned about zip-lock bags and static electricity. So I run back downstairs and take it out. About 10 minutes had gone by. For kick and giggles, I popped it back into my laptop and sure enough, IT WORKED!!! I only left it on for like 15 minutes to get some homework and other important files off of it, but it worked!!! And I didn't even freeze it overnight like some said. I haven't turned it on since because I'm going to buy Norton Ghost to backup the drive and make an exact image of the drive so that if this drive gets really messed up beyond freezing, I can just pop in the discs and not skip a beat.
diggitdiggitOct 6, 2006
Here is the deal:My family has a Dell XP Home, and a old Dell ME. The me had some hd problems before, doing some stuff with masters/slaves and replacing; couple years ago. It was like 9 or 10 on a school night, I wasn't thinking clearly. I opened to the pc for no particular reason. Then I remembered that I had wanted to switch hds, C and D. Drive C was a 120 GB, nice and big. For some reason, it failed and said that it only had 30MB. Weird?! So I switched the primary drive to D, which had 80GB, so I was fine. Then I tried to switch drives, WITHOUT TURNING OFF THE PWR! I openly accept mocking insults and ridicules. So a thin wisp of smoke goes up from C, and I quickly powered down. Then it didn't find C or D. Ran some recovery programs from a disc. NO LUCK. So now the hds are in the freezer (in a plastic bag :) already for 24 hrs. I'm going away for the weekend, so like 100 hrs it will be in the freezer. I'll post later on how it'll work. My mom will kill me if she finds out I crashed and possibly destroyed the hd. But a computer techie at school said he'd give me a free 2GB hd, so possibly I'll live. I hope.I'll Post Later10/4
matthewf01Sep 17, 2007
its not a hack.
ninevNov 18, 2007
zxpvihapwreijpaojer poaisjd fpoaisjdfpahsdpfihaspdfih
ninevNov 18, 2007
digg.com sucks ass because they put fake statistics or their scripts arent working right
extreme8Jan 9, 2008
This is the real deal folks.I found this thread years ago and promised myself I'd try it if I ever ran into this problemWell. last week I did. My external drive with all of my photos went south and I had no luck getting it back online.Popped it in the freezer for 3 hours and I could read it for 4 or 5 minutes.Tried this several times with the same results.Went out and got some dry ice, packed the drive and the dry ice into a box, and recovered ALL of my data.Why does it work??? Who knows.It wasn't a problem with the drive spinning up, what we used to call a "stickion" problem, but for some reason it worked long enough for me to recover my critical data (several hours once the dry ice was used).As soon as the drive wams up it dies again, but I got what I needed.I'm a happy camper.
ritjobbieNov 18, 2008
I have firewire cables going into a freezer from a computer as we speak...
vrajputJan 19, 2009
Before some days I lost my data when I was formating my computer, It was was very important because my clients details was in my computer, Then One of my friend suggest me to use the stellar data recovery software and believe me I have recover my all data..Thanks stellar ( <a class="user" href="http://www.stellarinfo.com/">http://www.stellarinfo.com/</a> ) you save my business life...
mvidataJun 18, 2009
RAID 0, 1, 5 Data Recovery MVI RAID Data Recovery engineers specialise and have experience in recovering data from complicated RAID arrays, RAID 5, RAID 1 and RAID 0. If your company or home business has been affected by RAID corruption or hardware failure, please call our emergency RAID data recovery department on 0800 050 1128.<a class="user" href="http://www.mvidatarecovery.com">http://www.mvidatarecovery.com</a><a class="user" href="http://www.mvidatarecovery.com/raid-data-recovery.aspx">http://www.mvidatarecovery.com/raid-data-recovery. ...</a>
adhweb1Jun 29, 2009
I'd like to add some lay persons language here to explain this as myth or reality.In some (but not all) cases, when a hard drive head (there are normally several) has crashed, it has damaged a portion of the surface of the disk. However sometimes the hard drive head has a foreign object (particle) lodged between it and the disk surface. By freezing it is common knowledge that materials normally shrink in size, and thus by shrinking the head becomes dislodged and can read and/or move freely with no risk of damage to the disk. However if the disk head arm has been dislodged, the freezing will only give a short period of time before the disk (or part of it) is not readable again. I have found that overnight freezing in a regular home freezer is sufficient to recover all data from damaged laptop disks.The reason this doesn't always work is because there can be some over problem, broken coils in motors, broken circuitry, completely damaged surfaces, completely jammed or dislodged heads. In these cases, but very rarely, some abrupt shocks can make the disk usable again, however rarely is all the data recoverable.
grinningAug 18, 2009
It's not a myth, but i wouldn't expect a permanent result and quite surprised some folks from here still have these hard drives working. As the disk warms up, the parts will expand, I always had time only to recover and copy the data.
tompatrickJan 27, 2010
It's a truth that can't be denied. I am saying o as I has a crashed hard drive and didn't find any way to retrieve it. one of my friend told me about the Stellar Phoenix, the data recovery software. I went to call them up they took the hard drive and recovered the data through physical recovery. Provided me the tip to keep the hard drive in to the freezer( under some specific situation). I was totally shocked to hear that but its true. <a class="user" href="http://www.stellarinfo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stellarinfo.com/</a> is the site where i found the free download version of the software and the contact information.
hel10z84Apr 22, 2010
Hello Everyone,I am happy to confirm that this TRICK worked for me.I was worried that i had lost all my files, i dont really cared if i lost my music/moves, but my pictures were what i wanted. Music and Videos, well i can always download again, but pictures i cant go back in time and retake them. The HDD was making a clunk sound and was stuck in a loop. I tried pulling it into Windows/Mac and Linux and nothing worked.I tried Get Data Back 4.0 on Windows and it just said that the sectors in the HDD were damaged (error reading...)I then decided, let’s try this Freeze trick.I got myself a sandwich bag which has the air tight seal. I placed the HDD in it, sucked the air and closed it. I then put it in the freezer for 4-5 hours. Once frozen I plugged it into my computer and the clunk sound was louder and still stuck in the loop and I was like, dam this trick didn’t work for me.Anyway a few hours later I decided, let me plug it in again and BOOM, Windows picked it up and the HDD was appearing in My Computer and I could access all the folders and files. I immediately started to copy the pictures folder and I have backed it up to another HDD and online.I guess the Freeze + Defrost helped it and its running smooth with no clunk noise.I chucked it out once all the data was retrieved as to risky to keep using it.Thanks for this awesome trick and you saved me BIG TIME.:)
kkulmiMay 31, 2010
This sounds quiet unbelievable, the idea of freezing your hard drive to recover the lost data , the best advice is that you should stop working on your disk as soon as you notice the data loss and then use the data recovery software to recover the data, there are lots of software available and I have found data recovery software's from Stellar quiet effective for linux "stellar phoenix linux data recovery 4.0"
recoverysoftwaresorgJan 3, 2011
That's interesting, Thanks! http://www.recoverysoftwares.org/
alanwilliams2010Jul 27, 2011
How to recover data from crashed hard drive?
Remove the hard drive and put it into an enclosure.Plug it into another computer as a slave.Then you can copy your files on it.
If it shows up in 'my computer' as a drive letter(like E: drive) but you can't access it,you can recover data on it with data recovery program to avoid losing your data.I have succeed with Tenorshare data recovery. It can recover data after deeply scanning your hard drive to look for lost data due to drives crash, physical damage,system sabotage, virus attack etc.You can get it here: http://www.any-data-recovery.com/product/datarecoveryprofessional.htm After you recover your data,you can format it to check out whether it can be fixed.
If the hard drive can't be detected,you can try this way.Put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in the freezer for overnight. Then while it's still cold plug it into the computer and you may be able to view it in 'my computer'. And if needed, run the recovery program to recover your data on it.
If it fails, you will have to go to a recovery office where supply data recovery service but let's hope not because it will cost you a lot of money and whether they can recover data is not guaranteed.
MirandaWilliams2011Aug 24, 2011
Clicking sound coming from your hard drive? Unable to access your photos or music on the hard drive of your computer? Wiped out the hard drive by mistakes? Don’t worry! You can recover data from your hard drive easily with data recovery software!
How to Recover Data from Hard Drive?
http://www.any-data-recovery.com/recover-data-from-hard-drive.htm
lzhou0119Dec 23, 2011
if you lost your files accidentally, you could try this one
http://www.tdcsoft.com/pages/Download.html
it's a powerful tool and free to download and use
JebBush23Jan 31, 2012
Are you one of Western Digital My Passport Essential external hard drive users? When data loss happens on your WD external HDD, you need external hard drive data recovery software to recover your lost data.
http://www.any-data-recovery.com/external-hard-drive-recovery.htm