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TIL a tech at a Boise repair shop showed me the freezer trick for dead hard drives
Stopped by a shop on State Street in Boise last month to pick up some parts and the owner mentioned he keeps dead drives in the freezer overnight before imaging them. He said he's had about a 40 percent success rate on drives that click but still spin up, which is way better than anything I was getting with repeated power cycles. Tried it on two drives this week and got one full image off a 500GB WD that I had already written off. Anyone else mess with cold drives, or is this just luck?
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fionarodriguez17h ago
I swore the freezer thing was an old wives tale for years. Then a buddy who runs a small data rescue gig out in Nampa pulled a full 1TB Seagate image after a 12 hour freeze, drive was clicking like crazy before that. He wraps his in two ziplock bags and squeezes the air out so no moisture gets in, then works fast once it's out because you only get maybe 20 or 30 minutes before it heats back up and dies again. I watched him do it and the drive spun clean the whole time, which I did not expect at all. Now I keep a couple of dead ones in my own freezer just in case. It doesn't always work, but 40 percent sounds about right to me.
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