Hard Drive Recovery

**Ferrit** · May 21st, 2006, 09:59 AM

Just a little story for those of you that sometimes have dead harddrives.
Six months ago I built a system with a seagate 80 gig ide drive.(5 year warranty)
Well 3 days ago customer phones and says system will not boot at all. She drops it off and i put it on the bench to diagnose.
On boot all i get from the harddrive is a kind of clicking noise.
System will not boot at all and it will not find the harddrive in bios.
No detecion at all.
I try the seagate tools and even it will not find the harddrive.
Now I am concerened because she has buisness info and of course it isn't backed up at all.
So i call seagate, describe the drive and also the difficulties.
Their final word is ,It's all gone and no recovery short of a harddrive recovery by a specialty recovery place is possible.
Not liking the sound of this I proceed to put the harddrive in a plastic bag and dump it in the freezer for 24 hours.
Nothing to loose right.
24 hours later i setup the machine with a new drive in it,ready for a copy and connect the drive and boot to ghost.
Dam it detects the drive so I start copying immediately.
10%,20% it stops dead. Dam
So back in the bag and back in the freezer for 24 hours.
meanwhile i get 2 of those ice bags you ice you shoulder with and prepare for copy again.
Out of the freezer comes the drive this time wrapped by 2 ice bags. I boot to ghost, and WOOOHOOO i copy both partitions before the drive stops dead again.
Rescued all the info and made the customers day.

**street1** · May 21st, 2006, 10:16 AM

So back in the bag and back in the freezer for 24 hours.
meanwhile i get 2 of those ice bags you ice you shoulder
with and prepare for copy again.

That's really neat.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I knew cold shrinks and heat expands
from the old "Cold Shower Routine"

After seeing this I believe it now...always
thought it was "Bunk"

Thank You Ferrit "MythBusters" Discovery Channel.

**Ferrit** · May 21st, 2006, 10:26 AM

Actually street1 I have recovered a number of drives with the freezer trick.
the ice bags are new though

**street1** · May 21st, 2006, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

Actually street1 I have recovered a number of drives with the freezer trick.
the ice bags are new though

And a darn good idea!!!

**xpuser357** · May 21st, 2006, 05:12 PM

Thanks Ferrit for the pointers. How did you use ice bags? Here the humidity is
around 80 plus so you would condense a lot of water on the outside of your bags.

**street1** · May 21st, 2006, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by xpuser357

Thanks Ferrit for the pointers. How did you use ice bags? Here the humidity is
around 80 plus so you would condense a lot of water on the outside of your bags.

That's where we get the saying"I'm sweating my *****off!!!

You know when the kin folk are all gathered together in a small house in the summer...................We call it Relative Humility.

**xpuser357** · May 21st, 2006, 09:32 PM

Originally Posted by street1

That's where we get the saying"I'm sweating my *****off!!!

You know when the kin folk are all gathered together in a small house in the summer...................We call it Relative Humility.

Yes sir I can remember them days. Oh **it this happened last week at
Niece`s house 2 bedroom home had people in front yard, back yard, women
folk and kids in house and out all related

**Ferrit** · May 21st, 2006, 09:43 PM

Simple left the HD in the baggie and slipped the cable in and closed it off the best i
could.
Frankly at that point moisture wasnt a huge concern though. Getting the data off was.
I just wrapped the bagged harddrive up in the icebags then the whole mess on a towel

**format c:** · May 22nd, 2006, 03:12 AM

Way to go Ferrit, Now I know what to do if I am ever in that situation , Maybe some one will rig up and air conditioner to cool the drive while getting the data off of it

**xpuser357** · May 22nd, 2006, 07:10 AM

Originally Posted by format c:

Way to go Ferrit, Now I know what to do if I am ever in that situation , Maybe some one will rig up and air conditioner to cool the drive while getting the data off of it

An air conditioner will only change the air 20 degree`s cooler. A window unit will drop a little lower around 25 degree`s. Soon as air gets colder than say
around 40 degree`s and it will start to freeze up then no air at all.
I would stick with Ice baggie

EXPLAIN 80 degree`s in 60 out. per cycle
as Refrigerant is going through it`s cycle it is picking up heat (Latent and
sensible) and moving it outdoors. So as it is running you will see temp
change on output of blower/coil. and no you will not get instant cold setting it down to say 50 Degree`s

**3fingersalute** · May 22nd, 2006, 07:38 AM

So you're saying that if you install a cooling unit in her machine, she can keep using that hard drive reliably, right??

**3fingersalute** · May 22nd, 2006, 07:42 AM

Actually, this is one of the best tricks I've ever seen. Last retail shop I worked at, another tech and I were kicking around the idea of building a "HD Recovery" station that would consist of an old dorm-sized fridge with holes in the door for an IDE and power cables fished through the holes and then sealing them off the best we could and being able to actually run the hard drive inside the fridge.

Of course we never actually got around to doing it - oh well!

**Ferrit** · May 22nd, 2006, 07:52 AM

A freezer with a old ide external box mounted in it is what I thought.
Open the door slip out the ide box mount the drive and return it to freeze overnight

**format c:** · May 24th, 2006, 03:56 AM

Thanks for the AC lesson, I like the fridge idea, I wonder if those Coke can fridges get cols enough to make a hard drive chiller ( Cryogenic hard drive storage unit )
Hmmmm thniking now , Or just put the drive in a enclosure and toss it in the deepfreezw