Wonder if he knows when to freeze a hard drive ?????????????????

mickjapa108, if you have a computer problem, send me a Private Message.

What do you mean?

Ah....
The question is...
WHEN to put an hard disk drive IN THE FREEZER ?

Mind, you only do it once, very carefully, and for a VERY good reason !

Pretty old school stuff for testing such a young pup, wouldn't'cha say?
They never did teach this old 80s-era remedy in school.

Abracadabra...

Hey you fellow old timers, I'm old, but new to Computers so go on & tell us.

My thought is, that you would freeze it if the HDD had begun to fail before loosing all
data, Freeze then plug back in, boot then quickly cut n paste data to another physical
drive.
So go on give the answer

__________________
mickjapa108

That's it exactly. Unfortunately, this is only effective if the problem is a bad bearing in the
platter drive or the swing arm. It temporarily tightens things up just enough to get one more
day out of it. The downside is it can sometimes overtighten and destroy the bad bearing and
throw shrapnel into the mix, at which point you must unplug it and either turn it over to a data
recovery firm or recycle it.

I usually park the computer on top of the freezer and keep the drive plugged in all the time.
That can give me enough hours to back up everything.

... and (a BIG secret) - Do all of this desperate stuff using an external HDD case and keep the 'bad' HDD as cold as possible for as long as possible...
(Mind, when freezing for 24 hours, you must place the drive in a sealed bag to make some effort towards limiting moisture probs.)
Hence, if you do the process using an external HDD case, it (the drive) is going to remain cooler just that little bit longer.
Other tip, natch, is to be VERY VERY VERY much prepared and not do a lot of 'thinking' about searching for what you NEED to save.

There is no 'hard and fast' rule re: how much 'access' time you may have...
5 mins to 20 mins is fairly standard.
After that ? Give it to your local school for the kids to dismantle.
(Or, better... Send it to the FBI swearing that it contains anti-Dumfukistani files.
Let THEM try to recover your junk !)

Hey, it might be old, but it still works and is for sure worthy of a mega-jaw-drop from any client or friend who manages to recover his data 'cuz some old sh¡t knew how to do it... MAYBE !?????????????

There are even more crazy things like this that are not only NOT crazy (basic physics on the surface of this planet) but actually work and can also, quite frequently, make the sun shine out yer bottom !

I just park it in the freezer with the cables out to the computer and start working as soon as it
gets cold. You can get a whole day that way and recover virtually all of the data.

How's that for a big [well, clumsily oversized], power-cooled external case?

I was thinking of mentioning the baggie but I eventually stopped doing that because I don't
leave the drive 'on ice' for long before turning the attached computer back on. It cools quicker
without a baggie so it tends to take only about twenty minutes before SpinRite can start
recovering the few lost sectors if any were damaged.

Afterwards they can become an interesting bit of artwork or even a cute [if noisy] desk fan if
the platter bearing is still good enough for that.