I broke down and put a drive in the freezer.......

[gtd4242]

HEY!!! That's the one I used....except mine is an older model....doesn't have that fancy LED display.

[jono-ats]

My apology to PC Recovery . . . upon second reading, I'm sorry if I came across like a bull in a china shop . . . certainly nothing personal intended on my part.

Jon

[gtd4242]

My apologies to PC Recovery as well if I misread your statements and came across a bit harsh. I obviously mistook your comments.

[derp]

Hi gtd4242,

Fooled by randomness - you should read the book.

Read it 6 years ago. Doesn't apply here, since I acknowledged that I got lucky. However, it's not luck that cold does have a positive effect in some cases, just like heat has a positive effect in some cases.

If you don't know when heat or cold will work - it is luck.

Is it luck or is it not luck - in your case?
You say you got lucky, but you suggest it's not luck - perhaps it's just random

[gtd4242]

Hi gtd4242,

Fooled by randomness - you should read the book.

Read it 6 years ago. Doesn't apply here, since I acknowledged that I got lucky. However, it's not luck that cold does have a positive effect in some cases, just like heat has a positive effect in some cases.

If you don't know when heat or cold will work - it is luck.

Is it luck or is it not luck - in your case?
You say you got lucky, but you suggest it's not luck - perhaps it's just random

I use heat and cold quite often, depending on the case, and after diagnosing the drive, I know what should be used. This was just an unusual set of circumstances with the time constraints I faced. This is a case where I knew the drive needed to be cold. Putting the drive in the freezer for an hour gave me the 30 minutes of life I needed from it to get the front half of the drive imaged. I got lucky in the sense that putting it in the freezer actually did help, having never done something like that, and having railed against the practice. I half expected light condensation to build up on the platters, and a head crash to occur to be quite honest. In many cases that may have been the result, I just happened to get lucky in that regard with this case.

[bos]

...tried imaging with various heads deactivated...

First, I'm awfully sorry I'm reviving this 6 year old thread.

Second, imaging with heads deactivated is what made me revive it since I've been thinking about this technique for a while.

This is way above my skills so I'll just keep it simple with an intellectual question. If a drive got two heads, only one working, how is the image (with the dead head deactivated) useful? I'm thinking I'm only extracting 50% of the data here, and of what use will that be for me?

[jermy]

how is the image (with the dead head deactivated) useful? I'm thinking I'm only extracting 50% of the data here, and of what use will that be for me?

some times it can be useful, hint: if you need to recover small files, and don't need the entire drive.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

how is the image (with the dead head deactivated) useful? I'm thinking I'm only extracting 50% of the data here, and of what use will that be for me?

some times it can be useful, hint: if you need to recover small files, and don't need the entire drive.

Hello ,
Many Times in India I Get External WD HDD's .Assuming 1 Head is Off and I can Clone The Rest 3 Out of The 4 In The HDD.I Quote My Price To customers And Also The Price For a Complete HSA Swap [ Surprisingly Only 25% Agree For Complete HSA swap ,Rest Can Do Away With It ] .My Country is weird When it comes to Data recovery [ As The Head is Gone Mostly i Do a RAW File Data Recovery And They Are Happy ]

[syntaxerror]

I've put knackered drives into the fridge many times so they can cool down, but never into the freezer!

The fridge approach is 100% safe (well I think). To the contrary, freezers produce ICE. Lots and lots of ice. And if just a little bit of this ice melts, it may mean that milliliters of water get inside your HDD. What! The HDD is hermetically closed isn't it! Yes, from the front side, it is, of course. But what about condensed fluids "contaminating" the PCB side, on the rear of the drive??

It can either flow directly onto your PCB and cause both the tiny tracks and the legs of the ICs, transistors or resistors to get rusty (or even the connections capped themselves). Or, smaller amounts of fluid might even flow UNDER the PCB and actually do make it into the inside, e. g. through a tiny gap---fractions of inches wide---near the surroundings of the spindle motor.

Never put a drive into the freezer. NEVER EVER.

(my 2c)

[data-medics]

I've seen a few cases in the past (quite some time ago) that would only read when they were very cool but became unstable if the temp rose at all. I just picked up some dry ice down the street from here, threw the drive in a bowl with a handful of the dry ice and imaged away. It actually did work, though the problem was likely just due to PCB.

Nowadays I just swap the PCB when in doubt because I have just about all of them. But, at the time I was trying to get it done quick and didn't have one handy.