Does putting a hard drive in the freezer really work?
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Does putting a hard drive in the freezer really work?
Putting your hard drive in the freezer does not work. It does not fix any serious problems with your hard drive. In fact, it can (and does) severely damage your hard drive. The hard drive freezer trick has at best a 50\% chance of doing nothing and a 50\% chance of making things even worse.
Why would you freeze a hard drive?
Hard drives are comprised of a series of magnetized platters where your information is stored. To retrieve data, spindles spin the platters so read-write heads can find the information you want. Theoretically, freezing a hard drive could shrink the hard drive components and bring them back into alignment.
How long should I put my hard drive in the freezer?
Leave the hard drive in the freezer for at least 12 hours. Then connect the drive to the computer and start copying data. At some point, the hard drive will fail again. When it does, redo the procedure until all data is copied or the drive dies.
Can freezing a hard drive that crashed restore it to life?
A hard drive that has crashed or cannot mount can be returned to life by leaving it in the freezer overnight. Not every hard drive having problems responds to this freezer treatment, but in some cases it does seem to work.
Why is hard drive clicking?
The printed circuit board in your hard drive connects electronic components. Sometimes, that board or the head stack assembly is damaged by a power surge or surges. When either of these are damaged, the hard drive cannot function properly, and the result is a hard drive noise that sounds like a click or tick.
How do you unfreeze a frozen hard drive?
- Restart your computer. The hard drive may have frozen because the operating system became unresponsive.
- Click “Start” and “Computer.” Right-click your hard drive.
- Launch the anti-virus program that you are using to protect your computer.
- Reformat the hard drive if you cannot stop it from freezing.
Why do hard drives click when they fail?
Every hard drive has a read-write actuator to input and interpret data from the disc. The actuator scans over the hard drive’s platters either reading or writing that data. When this movement isn’t so smooth, the actuator tries repeatedly to reset itself. This is what results in the familiar hard drive clicking sound.
Are hard drives repairable?
In theory yes, they can be repairable. In practice it’s not worth it in 99.9\% of cases, and there’s very little infrastructure built up for it – there aren’t HDD repair centres all over the place, because people are better off just buying a new one instead of repairing an old one.
Can you fix the Click of Death?
Once the hard drive has suffered from the Click of Death, it is unlikely to be able to be fixed. If you have a backup, you shouldn’t need to fix the drive to recover data. If you don’t have a backup, you could consider sending your drive to a professional data recovery company to try to recover your data.
What happens if you put a hard drive in the freezer?
Placing a hard drive in the freezer is said to cause its parts to contract and return to their proper places for a short time. When this works, it may allow the computer user to get up to 20 additional minutes of life out of it. In most cases, this fix is only used to recover data from a hard drive that is no longer spinning.
Is too much cold bad for your hard drive?
The idea that excessive heat is bad for computer components is widely known. But not quite so widely known is that excessive cold, and in particular excessive and rapid temperature change is bad for your hard drive as well. Perhaps this is one reason why the hard drive freezer trick persists to this day.
What should you do when your hard drive overheats?
A professional data recovery lab is. Ice should stay in the freezer, but your hard drive should go to a recovery lab. Sure, computer components and machinery break down as they overheat—that’s common knowledge.
What happens when your hard drive gets humid?
If the air around (and inside) a hard drive is excessively humid, it can cause a catastrophic failure. This is actually a notable problem faced in many data centers. Most freezer trick believers nowadays will tell you to bag up your hard drive in an airtight bag (or double-bag it, even) and squeeze out as much air as possible before closing it.