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molton's avatar
molton
Explorer
11 years ago

ever have luck recovering a clicking HDD by freezing it?

I have a 1 TB drive I (used to) backup my projects onto, I turned it on today and all it does is click. Incidentally, it started having a weird single click on startup, starting about a month ago, I didn't realize that meant failure was going to happen soon, at least that's what people say and seems to be true. So I double zip-lock bagged the hard drive and put it in my freezer right in front of the air vents so it gets nice and cold. I've heard many people say they got this method to work, with very slow transfer rates, but it worked for them none the less. My project is already backed up and nothing else too important is on there so I'm definitely not trying to spend $3,000-$6,000 for a drive recovery, but there are things on there I'd love to be able to get off of there. Of course, all the people charging thousands of dollars for recovery are always there too saying it will never work, but too many people say it has worked for them for me to think this is a complete waste of time, I'm wondering if anybody here has had luck restoring a clicking drive using this method before. Clicking as in not stuck heads, but heads that click. I wish the heads were stuck because from what I've seen that recvery method is much more likely to work than this.

The double bagging is for condensation to form on the inside of the first bag and hopefully not inside the second bag containing the drive, but I imagine unless I run it in freezing temps too, I'm going to get some condensation forming in there.

Anybody here put a Hard drive in the freezer before?

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  • nosys70's avatar
    nosys70
    Expert Protege
    11 years ago
    clicking drives are the most difficult to save.
    I think the way drives are working is at power up, the head quit the parking zone and try to find the first track.
    if it does not find it, it goes recalibration (the click) and tries again.
    this could mean one head is dead and not reading the data at all.
    Disk that can be easily recovered are the one that have motor speed problems, or heavy error reading while still working a bit.
    i think there are some reason why it is call "click of death".....
    some other problems that can easily be solved with disk is burned fuse (yes most drives have some tiny surface mount fuse soldered somewhere). or bad electronics. I got tons of old dead disk so i can get the electronic , just in case.
    The last problem you can easily fix is stuck motor or head, by gentle tapping while powering up.
  • saviornt's avatar
    saviornt
    Protege
    11 years ago
    molton:

    Now that you know that the data cannot be retrieved w/o spending mega-bucks, it is time to foray into the real world of data recovery. Time to get a cheap HDD that is of the same mfg/model, take it apart, and replace the platters with the drive you want the data off ;)

    The clicking is from head not correctly staying in one place (it bounces back).. at least, from my understanding. Just make sure that you are in a "dust-free and humidity-free" environment to better your chances. Also, you will want to use surgical gloves so you don't get sweat/oil on the drive platter(s), and use a surgical mask for the same reasons... oh what the !@#, also get a hair net, etc.. (clean room environment).

    Happy trails!
  • Semicidal's avatar
    Semicidal
    Honored Guest
    11 years ago
    Cyber wins this round. I hoped someone would mention spinrite and I am happy it was him.
    Give spinrite a try. It should help get that data off the drive, and might even bring it back to life...although I still wouldn't use it in rotation if I were you.
  • molton's avatar
    molton
    Explorer
    11 years ago
    thanks, I normally would love to do something like try to replace the platters of a hard drive but I'm too busy for that right now plus when I can afford a replacement I'd rather just keep it factory fresh :) there was nothing too important on there that wasn't backed up elsewhere. I'd try spinrite but I doubt it could work through what I'm fairly sure is complete hardware failure.