My laptop's hard drive got dropped, and is making some whirring/clicking noises. It'll halfway boot Windows, then freeze. I read about putting the drive into the freezer for 24 hours, and sometimes it works for copying the mission-critical data off it. I'm not sure if this is genuine, or Internet hyperbole. Thoughts?
Freezing a failing hard drive?
- Thread starter sciphi
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Sounds like the spindle is messed up. Lay it on a table and give it a few quick left right twists or spins by hand. Tap very lightly. Sometimes that can pop things back into place.
Also..could be some other component in the laptop, connector loose, etc causing a boot error. A look inside can verify. Mounting the drive in another laptop if possible will verify if the drive is damaged.
Also..could be some other component in the laptop, connector loose, etc causing a boot error. A look inside can verify. Mounting the drive in another laptop if possible will verify if the drive is damaged.
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Depends on what's wrong with the hard drive. I used the frozen hard drive method once ... I managed to copy about 3gb of data before it failed again.
Putting the hard drive in the freezer is an effective recovery method. It's a one shot deal though.
No wont work for dropped harddrives. It was dropped and something internal is going on. Ive never had luck freezing a dropped drive. Maybe others have.
Ive had success with freezing a drive that just failed out of the blue. Managed to save some documents off the desktop before it died again.
Ive had success with freezing a drive that just failed out of the blue. Managed to save some documents off the desktop before it died again.
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Originally Posted By: Bryankkkk
No wont work for dropped harddrives. It was dropped and something internal is going on. Ive never had luck freezing a dropped drive. Maybe others have.
+1 damaged r/w head no doubt or the platters are crooked on the spindle. I went to Carbonite on everything after re-building my life once....once was enough for me.
No wont work for dropped harddrives. It was dropped and something internal is going on. Ive never had luck freezing a dropped drive. Maybe others have.
+1 damaged r/w head no doubt or the platters are crooked on the spindle. I went to Carbonite on everything after re-building my life once....once was enough for me.
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This is the reason I keep everyone backed up to a file server lol and important stuff online too.
Originally Posted By: Nick R
This is the reason I keep everyone backed up to a file server lol and important stuff online too.
I am too lazy as is my whole family...so I put everyone on Carbonite. The 2 kids in College have had total drive failures and complete restoration without loosing any term papers, class notes etc. Worth every penny not to hear the screaming, kicking ,crying, blaming, anger, hatred....you know...why it's my fault...
This is the reason I keep everyone backed up to a file server lol and important stuff online too.
I am too lazy as is my whole family...so I put everyone on Carbonite. The 2 kids in College have had total drive failures and complete restoration without loosing any term papers, class notes etc. Worth every penny not to hear the screaming, kicking ,crying, blaming, anger, hatred....you know...why it's my fault...
Freezing does work in some circumstances.
I use Linux, 'ddrescue', and an external drive enclosure or drop-in reader.
'ddrescue' is a program that reads the disk and logs which blocks are not readable. On subsequent runs it defaults to only attempting to read the previously unreadable blocks.
The first time through will take hours or even a day, copying the bulk of easily recovered data. Subsequent runs only attempt to read the bad blocks and are much faster.
Once you've read all of the easy data, freeze the drive and re-scan. You'll find that you are able to recover additional blocks that weren't readable at room temperature.
Dropping the drive will not help, and may do damage. I haven't had a drive with 'stiction' problems in about 20 years. It was such a high profile problem the designers made certain that it never happened again.
I use Linux, 'ddrescue', and an external drive enclosure or drop-in reader.
'ddrescue' is a program that reads the disk and logs which blocks are not readable. On subsequent runs it defaults to only attempting to read the previously unreadable blocks.
The first time through will take hours or even a day, copying the bulk of easily recovered data. Subsequent runs only attempt to read the bad blocks and are much faster.
Once you've read all of the easy data, freeze the drive and re-scan. You'll find that you are able to recover additional blocks that weren't readable at room temperature.
Dropping the drive will not help, and may do damage. I haven't had a drive with 'stiction' problems in about 20 years. It was such a high profile problem the designers made certain that it never happened again.
Originally Posted By: 94astro
Put it in a usb enclosure then hook it up to a another computer via. usb port & rescue your data
That won't solve anything if the spindle is locked up.
Put it in a usb enclosure then hook it up to a another computer via. usb port & rescue your data
That won't solve anything if the spindle is locked up.
The clicking noise you hear is not spindle locking up. It is the head trying to leave the parking ramp and land on the media, then read the firmware to boot up the drive. If it has problem booting up the internal firmware, it would get back up the parking ramp with back EMF force from the spindle, and try again.
In the old days they just park the head on the media at a no data area, so sometimes the head would get stuck on the media and freezing it would help dislodge it. Today it is much less likely to work as they park the head on a ramp instead.
In the old days they just park the head on the media at a no data area, so sometimes the head would get stuck on the media and freezing it would help dislodge it. Today it is much less likely to work as they park the head on a ramp instead.
JHZR2
Staff member
IMO if this even works, before anything else, Id get a docking unit and either repalce the HD/OS in the laptop, or get another comoputer, so that you can start copying ASAP when you turn the HDD on.
Just do a few files at a time, and get working. Just move them permanently, dont copy them so they are in two spots.
This way you can keep track of files...
Good luck!
Just do a few files at a time, and get working. Just move them permanently, dont copy them so they are in two spots.
This way you can keep track of files...
Good luck!
Originally Posted By: gr8gatzby
Putting the hard drive in the freezer is an effective recovery method. It's a one shot deal though.
I personally have not had a hard drive fail to try this method, but about 4-5 years ago, I told this to a cousin who had his computer on 24 hours a day. He had a power failure one day and after that, the hard drive was froze. He was complaining to me about all the data that he had lost on this hard drive and I casually mentioned to him about the deep freezer "urban legend".
He tried it, it worked, and he managed to get all of the important information off of it before he put in a new hard drive and reloaded the OS.
Putting the hard drive in the freezer is an effective recovery method. It's a one shot deal though.
I personally have not had a hard drive fail to try this method, but about 4-5 years ago, I told this to a cousin who had his computer on 24 hours a day. He had a power failure one day and after that, the hard drive was froze. He was complaining to me about all the data that he had lost on this hard drive and I casually mentioned to him about the deep freezer "urban legend".
He tried it, it worked, and he managed to get all of the important information off of it before he put in a new hard drive and reloaded the OS.
Originally Posted By: Kruse
Originally Posted By: gr8gatzby
Putting the hard drive in the freezer is an effective recovery method. It's a one shot deal though.
I personally have not had a hard drive fail to try this method, but about 4-5 years ago, I told this to a cousin who had his computer on 24 hours a day. He had a power failure one day and after that, the hard drive was froze. He was complaining to me about all the data that he had lost on this hard drive and I casually mentioned to him about the deep freezer "urban legend".
He tried it, it worked, and he managed to get all of the important information off of it before he put in a new hard drive and reloaded the OS.
I had a hard drive that would just do the click of death and didn't spool up. This did the trick ... wasn't able to recover much (only a few GB) ... but it did work somewhat.
Originally Posted By: gr8gatzby
Putting the hard drive in the freezer is an effective recovery method. It's a one shot deal though.
I personally have not had a hard drive fail to try this method, but about 4-5 years ago, I told this to a cousin who had his computer on 24 hours a day. He had a power failure one day and after that, the hard drive was froze. He was complaining to me about all the data that he had lost on this hard drive and I casually mentioned to him about the deep freezer "urban legend".
He tried it, it worked, and he managed to get all of the important information off of it before he put in a new hard drive and reloaded the OS.
I had a hard drive that would just do the click of death and didn't spool up. This did the trick ... wasn't able to recover much (only a few GB) ... but it did work somewhat.
It's unlikely to help with impact damage, unfortunately. It sometimes helps get a little more functionality out of it after other kinds of failures.
I've done the freeze method on older SCSI drives in Solaris machines; I had to script the recovery as to not waste time typing. I was able to retrieve everything I needed of value.
Another old story is the older 400Mb SCSI drives that ran 24x7 would not start after an extended power outage; seems the spindle lube would congeal @ room temp, and wouldn't let the drive spin up again. Solution? Sun guy would come in a "hit" the drive to spin it up.....
Another old story is the older 400Mb SCSI drives that ran 24x7 would not start after an extended power outage; seems the spindle lube would congeal @ room temp, and wouldn't let the drive spin up again. Solution? Sun guy would come in a "hit" the drive to spin it up.....
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