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molton
Up and Coming
January 29, 2015
Question

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?

    14 replies

    kojack
    kojack
    Honored Contributor
    January 29, 2015
    I had a warped cd (magazine cover disc) that I could only play by soaking it in boiling water (to soften it), putting it in a flower press, then putting the press in a freezer. After that, I could get around an hour of use from it before it went back to it's warped state.
    That was just a case of bending plastic. Hard drives are a little different.
    (My father once tried to fix a hard drive by opening it up and spraying wd40 into it)
    Author: Oculus Monitor , Auto Oculus Touch , Forum Dark Mode , Phantom Touch Remover , X-Plane Fixer Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2, Quest 3
    Twitchmonkey
    Up and Coming
    January 29, 2015
    Not sure on the freezing front, but I would definitely look into doing your own data recovery if you're worried about lost files. Not sure how far gone your drive is at this point or whether it's still recognizable as a drive by your computer, but if it is, I've had great luck recovering the majority of lost files using the freeware program Recuva, it's very easy to use, but it's primarily for recovering deleted files, so you have to go into the advanced settings to find unreachable files that haven't been overwritten. You can also try a program like photorec or testdisk, but I've found those to work more slowly and they recovered more corrupt and unusable data in my experience.
    saviornt
    Up and Coming
    January 29, 2015
    I've had limited success with freezing a drive. It's one of those "last ditch effort" things though.

    Look into the programs that twitchmonkey mentioned, also, you can get an iso of Kali. It has a few data recovery / data forensic tools you can use.
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    MariahAlbert
    Participant
    January 29, 2015
    I haven't heard of it before..
    Mariah Albert Mobile Application development Company
    moltonAuthor
    Up and Coming
    January 29, 2015
    "kojack" wrote:
    (My father once tried to fix a hard drive by opening it up and spraying wd40 into it)
    lol, that's my dad too, "wd-40 fixes everything"

    "Twitchmonkey" wrote:
    Not sure on the freezing front, but I would definitely look into doing your own data recovery if you're worried about lost files. Not sure how far gone your drive is at this point or whether it's still recognizable as a drive by your computer, but if it is, I've had great luck recovering the majority of lost files using the freeware program Recuva...


    It is 100% not recognized by any computer, it's totally failed at this point. Recuva is awesome freeware though, I used it a couple months ago.

    "saviornt" wrote:
    I've had limited success with freezing a drive. It's one of those "last ditch effort" things though...


    great to hear, any success is better than no success. I'm going to wait until the sun goes down tonight and give it a shot with the drive between my bedroom window and the screen.
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    January 29, 2015
    I've heard a lot of positive stories about SpinRite (paid software, https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm ) but once a hard-drive starts clicking, that may be the end of the line.

    Also, this is probably a good point to start investigating cloud backups and source control.
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    Twitchmonkey
    Up and Coming
    January 30, 2015
    That's a shame, I guess freezing it can't hurt at this point, if you can get the computer to recognize it for an hour you can get Recuva to restore the important files. I've learned since I had my external HDD problems to never have any important data in one place, even a new drive that shouldn't be at risk of failing, since you never know what can happen. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way.
    moltonAuthor
    Up and Coming
    January 30, 2015
    that's a good point, I'm thinking If this thing does turn on again after the freezing the file system is still going to be intact, but that is probably naive, I should have some recovery software ready to go when I try this. I actually just got back from a Philly VR meetup that was very cool and I'm too tired to try this now, I'll try it in the morning and post what happens.
    nosys70
    Up and Coming
    January 30, 2015
    since many many years ago, before even internet exists, i was using this trick to revive damaged HDD.
    (yep a lot of you were not even born when i punched my first card)
    I saved dozen of disk that way , i mean recovering the data, disk was dead anyway.
    I am probably the guy who invented that trick since i will not ask for acknowledgment for it.

    I never try to know why it works but have some theory (cold helping some damaged transistor, condensation helping defective roller bearing, cold shrinking metal thus bringing loose part to better tolerance).
    moltonAuthor
    Up and Coming
    January 30, 2015
    Cool nosys70, if so thanks :) Unfortunately for me after 36 hours of freezing, the drive spins up fine like before, then the clicking starts. I tried smacking it on all 6 sides while clicking and I even tried shaking it really hard while plugged in with no results. Oh well, I didn't really have my hopes up that this would work anyway.
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