Someone posted a question about what data recovery software to use on the Slashdot site.

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/06/02/ ... e-Pros-Use

I guess we've all wasted our money on our tools. Who needs a clean room and PC3000 when you can buy SpinRite for $89. Drive doesn't detect? No problem, apparently SpinRite will fix it, if you freeze the hard drive first.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I hear taking the drive lid off before you put it in the freezer will get everything extra cold.

On a more serious note, I have also noticed the prevalence of urban legend-style suggestions like these on typically intelligent tech websites... spinrite, hdd regenerator, "the freezer trick"... I guess everyone out there "has a friend who that totally worked for".

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

What I don't understand is why people put the drive in a zip lock bag, when they put it in the freezer. Anyone can observe that a cold metallic surface will form condensation almost immediately after it is removed from the zip lock bag.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Customer called me about their hard drive problem a couple of days ago. I asked for the model number on the front of the drive to get a better idea of the failure. They told me that they would have to take it out of the freezer to check.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Well with freezer trick I read if you use minute rice inside you plastic bag it will keep out the condensation when it is removed and better for your drive. Then they say to seal the bag and only leave an opening on the connection of the pcb so when it is removed from the freezer you do not take it out of your bag and just run and plug it into your PC> Forget what smart site I read that one on. Good luck with the feezer do an ice chest work the same for remote field work recovery? If remote field work recovery do you use dry ice or regular ice?

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Iorana Haraharaini

Rice
I would prefer to use dry ice over regular normal ice. Have better results using it 'freezes everything faster'.

I hear cleaning the drive in cold clean water, before freezing without drying it helps. Keeping the drive cooler for longer when you take it out of the freezer. And if need to warm the drive quickly again, Two minutes in the microwave works wonders.

I've been lurking here for about a week, enjoying learning. I've been fascinated by how hard drives work for awhile, but haven't had time to indulge in learning more. Anyway, I'm still such a n00b with it, that it's not remotely funny.

I wanted to add to this thread, though. I've worked for a computer repair place where I've both used HDDRegen _and_ a freezer. In the latter case, it worked. (Just once, mind you, our of ~5 tries). The guy's drive wouldn't read at all; freezer overnight (no plastic bag!) and the next day, I pulled off 20+ gb of years of irreplaceable pictures. (Yes, I used to find myself telling every customer, "If you'd of just backed up...", but that's another story).

Regarding HDDRegen, I really can't count the number of times just running it, and having it 'fix' one bad sector, allowed the machine to boot. Granted, I've no idea what HDDRegen's actually _doing_, I can just attest that it was better than snake oil: actual results.

That all said, I'd like to know why it's bad, and why MHDD is potentially better.

If I could only read Russian, I wouldn't even need to ask, as it looks like this guy answers my question:
http://nazyura.hardw.net/Part01.htm

Unfortunately, google's translator dies not even halfway through.

It's a lost cause then. Keep freezing and hddregen'ing if it works...

I didn't mean to give offense, BlackST.

I've been reading quite a bit since posting, and think the freezing was pure luck, the one time it worked. Also, the hdd regen, from what I can understand of the translated Russian page, simply is forcing the hard drive to do what it would already, but not in a good way(?). I'd like to understand it better, but unfortunately resources are scarce. Thankfully, it looks like people like Spildit are actually willing to help and not try to scam/push a product/etc people.

Does anyone know of a way of completely translating a Russian page, since Google chokes halfway through (and Babelfish doesn't even try...)?

Thanks!

www.online-translator.com

Dobre

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Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

Yes, it (freezer) may well have worked, but it would probably have worked just as well if you hadn't put it in the freezer in the first place !!

Sometimes, hard disks that are left to cool down/settle at room temperature for a few hours will work again, and that would be the better of the two evils. But whatever the scenario - if the data is important consult a data recovery professional.

We get slagged off all the time for saying 'take it to a pro', but we are the people that have seen the results of well-meaning technicians attempts at data recovery - one example - A completely disassembled hard disk in a plastic bag - which would probably have been recoverable had the drive been sent to us before disassembly. Another case where the tecnician had cleaned the platter with a tooth brush.. Then, when we do have to admit defeat in these cases, the technicians say to their customer 'look, I told you it was bad - even the professionals couldn't recover it!'

Sorry if it looks like I'm blaming you, this is not aimed at you personally, and not that you (or most people) would do anything as extreme as the examples above, but every time I hear the terms 'hard disk' and 'freezer' in the same sentence, I cringe..

Somewhere on here, there is a post about myths of data recovery, one stupidly suggests 'If the data is critical, try banging the hard disk on the desk' and in the same document, there is the freezer trick too, so be careful when searching for into on the internet - it's not all true

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If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you probably don't fully understand the situation. ... Mr Kipling

https://www.mjm.co.uk/

A couple of years ago, I had a client call me saying that he had his drive at another place that does data recovery (a local computer shop). He said that the technician had the drive for a week and figured that the drive needed to be in the freezer for the weekend in order to get it to respond. When I suggested that it wasn't going to work, the drive was given to us.

I took off the PCB, verified that the usual controller chip was blown. I was still able to read the ROM with PC3000, so I reprogrammed another PCB, mirrored the drive and the client had his data within 24 hours of getting to me.

From time to time, I experiment with the freezer on various dead drives on my shelf. Not once has the freezer resolved the issues that I encounter. Of course, the most common issues are bad heads, blown PCB, seized motors, corrupt firmware and deleted files.

My official opinion:

Freezer = BAD
Hammer = BAD
SpinRite = BAD
HDDRegen = BAD

The above should be last resorts on data that isn't worth more than $100...with the expectation that if they are attempted, it is likely that further damage will be caused and the price from a data recovery professional will be considerably higher.

But, what do I know?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Neat link; I keep getting "Sorry, service temporary unavailable. Try again later. " trying to translate that page, though.


That's likely what happened. It's probably akin to picking up a girl in a bar with a deliciously lame pickup line, and having it work, but you find out later that she was utterly trashed (and with a reputation for promiscuity).

I tend to be curious about why things work, and for the freezer 'trick', the science of it was something about cooled molecules blah blah blah. Hey, some folks believe in the stars having an affect on their lives! Really, though, I remember in the old days when hard drives (MFM...) had "Monday morning blues", where the platters had contracted over the weekend just enough that the heads were no longer aligned, so I thought it might be possible for the freezer trick to do _something_. Next thing you know, ya'll will tell me there's no such thing as leprechauns... and, wait, everything on the Internet's not true?!!!

HDD Regen seemed like a real 'blessing' when I found that, because it does work. Well, not to fix the drive, but when you run a program on a system that won't boot, see it go through and 'fix' a bunch of bad sectors, and then it boots --- that's pretty compelling.

From what I've been able to gather, though (and really wish I could read that Russian page! *slams the translators on his desk and tries to put them in the freezer*) is that it's basically just making the drive reallocate sectors. I thought the way it worked was it kept reading a sector until it got a consensus of the data (which I guess is what Spinrite does as well?) and simply rewrites it somewhere else AND puts an entry in the defect list.

These things were so much simpler back in the 80s! Now with a better understanding of how it works, except for specialized software, 'normal' software doesn't even get to access that list; the drive's firmware does, right?

I've been reading the MHDD faq/docs (btw, why did it remove the script engine in 4.6? Couldn't find that anywhere...) and what I'm gathering is I can have the same affect as hddregen by simply finding a way to get the data off, and then zero'ing the whole drive; and mhdd will work on systems where the BIOS won't see the whole drive, since it's not using the INT13 hooks. That is, of course, assuming that it's all soft errors. Is this right?

I've actually told a lot of customers to take it to a pro (and given a nice print out I'd done with the local recovery places...) (after my usual, "What, you don't have backups?!") and when they see that it starts around $1500, their eyes tend to bulge out. Some of them take their drives to put on a shelf until 'someday' (the ones that have their marriage photos/videos, baby photos, etc) they can afford it. Most just say, "Oh well, I can't afford that". Of course, there were some that almost certainly would be taking it to a data recovery place; off the top of my head, the woman who had _5 years_ of her business's tax data, all not backed up, on a dead drive.

We (the technicians) only played around with drives after the people expressed no interest in having someone who knew what they were doing work on it; hence the ones that got lobbed in the freezer. :p It was mostly for our own edification, to learn a bit more about something we knew so little about. That's pretty much where I am; I do have a couple ones that need 'fixing' (a locked laptop drive --- funny story with that one, as well as another one for a friend, that doesn't spin up, but will with a similar pcb, and just click) but mostly, I'm just fascinated by where hard drives are at now; I saw one of the Seagate terminal cables (right way to say that?) when the 7200.11 'problem' was being mentioned everywhere, and thought it was so cool. (Not the 7200.11 issue, but that you could access the Seagate's TMOS from hyperterm with a diy cable).

Anyway, people buy stuff like Spinrite and hddreg probably because of marketting, and word of mouth. Until I knew better, "I" recommended hddregen; I'd seen it work. I guess the underlying problem is that you should never recommend something that appears to work, but you don't know how or why; the next thing you know, you find you've been telling people to buy stock in a perpetual motion machine. :-p