Since my old computer was giving me problems, I took out the hard drive and bought a USB adapter to back everything up to my new(er) computer. Unfortunately, instead of just clicking and dragging the entire drive, I was doing it in piece meal fashion over the course of days. Then the clicking started The blasted hard drive crashed.
Now when I start up the drive I get the clicking and my new computer doesnt recognize the drive. I’ve heard of people putting their hard drives in the freezer, somethign about the cold contracting the metal …? It’s worth a shot
Anyone have any success/know anyone who did? Any tips on how long to put it in the freezer, if it’s worth setting the freezer lower than normal temp, anything? I’ve been told this is a one-shot deal, so I want to get as much as I can off of it. Thanks
Also open to any other data recovery recommendations
Freezing a hard drive will do no harm to the hard drive, though allowing it to get moist will. Keep this in mind and put it in some sort of container. I’ve never heard about freezing a hard drive, but I guess it’s worth a try?
put it in a ziplock container so moisture doesnt condense on it. if everything else fails and you had sensitive data on the drive, you probably want to get professional data recovery people to get your stuff back
[quote]johnnytang24 wrote:
I don’t believe LaCie makes the actual hard drive. Just the enclosure.
As far as freezing, it’s worth a try. There’s no hard rules about it. Just let it get cold and try it. If it doesn’t work, let it get colder.
It may or may not work. Depends on what’s wrong with the drive[/quote]
You’re right, LaCie does not make drives. They make enclosures and other such products that are quite good if a bit overpriced.
Like was said, moisture is the problem with freezing, not the freezing itself. You’re well off putting it in a large container that seals with a bunch of moisture absorbing material; uncooked rice works well.
Note that as it thaws it may seize up again. It may take several tries to get all your data off if it works.
I’ve heard of this method before, the only evidence that it works at all is purely anecdotal, but if you’ve exhausted all other possibilities why not try it? It’s only a temporary fix, even if it works, people use it to rescue important data rather than repair a drive. Make sure you use a freezer bag or something similar.
well, if you hear a clicking sound then most likely you have a bent arm or a head…also…freezing…argh…i havent heard anything about that but…the last thing you want is moisture within a hard drive. so…yea…if its bad…then i guess it wont hurt to try.
I’ve done it before - as a last resort. I managed to get a dead hard drive to work for about 10-15 minutes.
This was a good 8-10 years back though, but I believe I simply threw it in the freezer overnight, as is. Took it out in the morning and it worked - not for very long though.
Alternatively, you could try and put it in and external enclosure and keep getting the PC to try recognise it - it sounds like it’s an internal? I have an external WD that failed on me not too long ago (not entirely); when I plug it in tried to spin up but has the clicking sound, then keeps trying and trying. I can get it to connect every now and then and when it does, it works just fine.
I recovered a drive like this about 3 years ago AND IT’S STILL GOING!!!
If I recall correctly, the drive wouldn’t show up in windows (don’t remember if it was spinning or not) so after rebooting it still didn’t show up and now wasn’t spinning. No clicking or anything.
I put it in the freezer out of desperation for about half an hour (inside a ziplock bag) and reconnected it. Brought the pc back up and still nothing. I unplugged the power and hot plugged it and still nothing.
Thinking, again out of desperation, that it was just stuck/seized I then gently twisted the case and OMFG it started to spin. So I check in windows and sure enough the directories were back but appeared kind of screwy. I couldn’t get into any of the folders, so rebooted and there was nothing again. I put the drive back in the freezer overnight and it came up just fine and has worked since.
For weeks after every body I spoke to I was like “OMG did I tell you about my freezer drive???” My uncle recalled my story and put his broken laptop in the freezer a few weeks ago but it didn’t quite work
[quote]debraD wrote:
I recovered a drive like this about 3 years ago AND IT’S STILL GOING!!!
If I recall correctly, the drive wouldn’t show up in windows (don’t remember if it was spinning or not) so after rebooting it still didn’t show up and now wasn’t spinning. No clicking or anything.
I put it in the freezer out of desperation for about half an hour (inside a ziplock bag) and reconnected it. Brought the pc back up and still nothing. I unplugged the power and hot plugged it and still nothing.
Thinking, again out of desperation, that it was just stuck/seized I then gently twisted the case and OMFG it started to spin. So I check in windows and sure enough the directories were back but appeared kind of screwy. I couldn’t get into any of the folders, so rebooted and there was nothing again. I put the drive back in the freezer overnight and it came up just fine and has worked since.
For weeks after every body I spoke to I was like “OMG did I tell you about my freezer drive???” My uncle recalled my story and put his broken laptop in the freezer a few weeks ago but it didn’t quite work :-P[/quote]
TheUofH - I believe it’s IDE, but I’ll check when I get home tongiht. to be honest I’m not even sure of the difference, all I know is that when i bought the adapter I had to look at the pins to see if i was plugging it into the IDE or SAT adapter. What difference would it make.
Thanks guys, for those of you who said “well if you’ve exhausted every other possibility …” do you guys have any other specific recommendations? I really havent tried anything else. My computer was having problems a couple of months ago - blue screen of death and the like - I described it on here, someone said ‘sounds like it could be the motherboard, buy this [linked to the usb adapter] and get your data off.’ So I bought it, was transferring as I explained, but not really with any urgency and then it just stopped recognizing
[quote]RSGZ wrote:
I’ve done it before - as a last resort. I managed to get a dead hard drive to work for about 10-15 minutes.
This was a good 8-10 years back though, but I believe I simply threw it in the freezer overnight, as is. Took it out in the morning and it worked - not for very long though.
Alternatively, you could try and put it in and external enclosure and keep getting the PC to try recognise it - it sounds like it’s an internal? I have an external WD that failed on me not too long ago (not entirely); when I plug it in tried to spin up but has the clicking sound, then keeps trying and trying. I can get it to connect every now and then and when it does, it works just fine.[/quote]
RGSZ, it’s an internal, yeah … This probably sounds idiotic, but what exactly is an external enclosure? I was looking at some on new egg and it looks liek the same thing I already have, but a docking station instead of a cable - is that the only difference?
External hard drives are just hard drives with casing, that you can connect the drive via USB as it’s hotswappable.
What I thought you could try is if you have one of these external enclosures for the internal drive, you could leave it plugged in via USB, and keep trying to get it to connect by turning the power [on the enclosure] on and off.
I only say this because it’s what I’ve been doing with my old WD 320gb to get the data off - it’s not completely dead, struggles to spin up, but it does eventually after a few on/offs.
[quote]RSGZ wrote:
External hard drives are just hard drives with casing, that you can connect the drive via USB as it’s hotswappable.
What I thought you could try is if you have one of these external enclosures for the internal drive, you could leave it plugged in via USB, and keep trying to get it to connect by turning the power [on the enclosure] on and off.
I only say this because it’s what I’ve been doing with my old WD 320gb to get the data off - it’s not completely dead, struggles to spin up, but it does eventually after a few on/offs.[/quote]
Ok, I think that is essentially the same thing that I have then, I guess I can give a try to turning the power on and off. I know I’ve tried it a few times, but more like 3-4 than 30-40-100
The blasted hard drive crashed.
