Hard-drives in freezers and the infant mortality rateFollow

Yes, it works. It's a last ditch effort after all other avenues have been exhausted after a head crash. Freezing causes the metals to get cold. The colder the metal, the more it contracts. Some times it's enough to raise the heads up off the platter for a short period of time.

How much time you have depends on how hard the crash was, but it's not a lot of time. It's also a one time deal quite often. Hard-drives are sealed units but they do have some moisture in their casing. Freezing causes it to condense and freeze, which then melts from both the ambient temperature and operational heat generated from friction and the servos.

split off the freezer baby thread to prevent hijacking

Edited, Nov 28th 2006 5:17pm by Nizdaar

Yes can work more than once, I have tried up to 6 times to save data for my boss at a previous job. I saved almost everything, and now she backs up quite regularly. I kept telling her it was dying... I still have that thing in my freezer!!!

I have a few Jehovah's witness' and a Girl Scout in the back as well.



She ran out of thin mints, I was very put out.

<3 that Metal shrinks when you freeze it. of course, water expands, so if there were water in the drive casing, that would be bad.

With long enough IDE and power cables, you can run the SOB from the freezer and get a few extra seconds\minuets out of it.

Tried and true method. Used it myself a few times. Just bag the damn thing up first.

Where would I keep my babies then?

I heard they splat.