I thought the 'freezer trick' for fixing a dead hard drive was total nonsense

A guy brought in a laptop with a clicking drive and said he'd heard putting it in a sealed bag in the freezer for a few hours might work. I told him it was a bad idea and would just kill it with moisture. He insisted, so we tried it on his already dead drive. We left it for about 4 hours, let it warm up fully, and it spun right up long enough to pull his photos off. It only lasted another 20 minutes before dying for good, but it worked. I still think it's a last ditch move, but I've used it twice since when data recovery was the only goal. Has anyone else had a weird trick like this actually save the day?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan_schmidt20d ago

Read an old forum post where someone swore by tapping a failing drive with a rubber mallet to get it spinning again. Desperate times, man.

john_ramirez19d ago

Seriously, a rubber mallet? That just sounds like a good way to turn a broken drive into a pile of scrap metal.

felix4784d ago

Tapping a hard drive with a mallet is like trying to fix a TV by kicking it. Sure, it might jiggle something loose for a second, but you're just finishing the job the crash started. That old forum guy probably just got lucky right before it died for good. I'd only try that if I already said goodbye to the data and wanted some stress relief. Otherwise you're just making a bigger mess to clean up.