Freezer trick

[btcomm1]

This hard drive had a file system, I could not copy a lot of the files I tried to copy.

It has smart failure on it.

One time while booting windows, windows decided it would be nice and start a chkdsk without a countdown for me to stop it.

Well, now the file system is gone. I know data recovery programs can get data back under this circumstance but the thing is with this drive, when you try to access it with any data recovery program the whole computer locks up, when I try to check it under disk management it is permanently stuck on connecting to disk management, or so it seems.

I have tried this in other computers, with Sata to USB adapters and it's doing the same thing every time.

Is there a program that can repair the ntfs file system like checkdsk only faster? Would the freezer trick work in this circumstance?

 

[hennessy1]

The freezer trick works if there is something physically wrong.

 

[RebateMonger]

Wow, btcomm1,

You've posted at least four threads since December about hard drives reporting SMART errors, and asking about possible causes and actions. Do you have the world's worst luck with drives?

Have you considered keeping backups of anything important?

 

[cubby1223]

Only time the freezer worked for me is when I had a failing hard drive that would fail at even moderate temperatures. Had to freeze the hard drive, as well as keep an ice pack on top of it, just to get it through a full file copy - scared the crap out of me when the ice in the ice pack cracked, thought it was the drive blowing up.

With all the bad drives I've worked with over the years, never really been able to recover from a drive that bad. Let the drive sit alone for a couple days, try it again. Don't know why, but someones it works to get you limited time to copy off a few important files.

 

[btcomm1]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Wow, btcomm1,

You've posted at least four threads since December about hard drives reporting SMART errors, and asking about possible causes and actions. Do you have the world's worst luck with drives?

Have you considered keeping backups of anything important?

Hehe, well they aren't my HD's actually.

The freezer trick did not work for me.

Same exact issue, computer becomes unresponsive while trying to access the drive with any program I try to use.

Oh well, I guess I will just let the drive sit for a while and hope that in a couple of days it will be magically responsive.

 

[RebateMonger]

I've never seen a convincing explanation of why freezing a hard drive would work. I tend to dismiss it as an Urban Myth, but I've seen a few reports of it working.

It's likely either:

a) The onboard drive controller chip is overheating, and the chilling delays its overheating
or
b) The differential contraction of the various components (head arm verus the platters) makes the head(s) miss the deepest gouges in the platter(s). I remember a similar explanation (differential contraction) when freezing was used to break free the heads on (ca. 1988) Seagate 44 MegaByte drives with Stiction problems.