6 Comments

“Freeze the malfunctioning hardrive” Ergh?

August 18, 2005 by in Stupid,Tech with 6 Comments

Well I tried out the “freeze the malfunctioning hard drive� trick and it didn’t seem to work out too well for me. My grandmother’s pc died and I attempted to recover some data by freezing the non functional hard drive but never had any success with it.

I even tried putting the hard drive in the pc as well as an external USB hard drive case.

I attached some pics of how I had things setup, take a look at them and see if I was doing this right.

Thanks,
- Ryan [via]

I’ve heard of throwing meat in the freezer to save for later. But attempting to freeze a bad hardrive for later data recovery? Well that’s just retarded. Ryan should be smacked upside the head with that block of ice.


  • jason

    Actually, freezing a hard drive can allow you to get some data off, however, not in a block of ice, but maybe just in a zip lock (optional).

  • hessam

    i’ve heard it works as well

  • Jean-Luc

    Did you just put your HD in a bucket of water and froze the whole thing. If so, could be the reason why it doesn’t work!

  • zakwer

    I have used this tip VERY succesfully to restore a dead disk. I just tried not to wet the disk.

  • http://none Michael Cottle

    From someone who has been around fixing computers for decades….THIS WORKS!

    Something to keep the moisture out is necessary (Ziploc). Freeze for about 12-24 hours, the parts in an old/defective drive will freeze and shrink (contract), meaning that loose parts moving inside will now be tight until it “melts”, because cold causes contraction, initially. I’ve used this to recover data about a dozen times in 20 years.

    It’s a old trick and it works in most cases!

  • zercom

    WoW that’s a cool pic, this method (-the water) has worked for me several times, I first discovered it out of shear frustration. put it in the dryer but that was to noisy, so I put it in the freezer and what do you know it worked and still is

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