Well… that was an interesting night!
Tonight was supposed to be a very simple hard drive copy to a server, virtualize a physical server, get a beer and go home... I figured, i'd be at home by 6 or 7pm... well... Technology has a way of really screwing with you. So here's a little story about my stupid night.
So 5:00pm goes around and i turn off the old desktop class machine that has been used as a server for the better part of 5 years. The plan is to take the hard drive will all the unamed organizations data off of it, put it on to our super fast secure awesome server, and then call it a night, if I had time i was going to get rid of the old physical hardware once and for all and put the server on our virtual server cluster, no brainer, i've done this kind of thing a million times before.
Here is where the first snag came, i got the hard drive, put it in our hard drive to firewire adaptor, and i couldn't get it to mount. Hell, i couldn't get it to spin... finally after some fiddling and adding the external power plug for the adaptor i got it going, i started the file copy, i thought i was done. I promptly went to play COD4 and blow some 12 year noobs up. I turned around to check on the status of the file copy, and i noticed the drive wasn't spinning. "Strange" I think to myself. I try remounting the drive over and over again, and it just won't go, this is already pissing me off. I put the drive on my Windows XP machine and it mounts after a long time, and i start the file copy again, and the drive stops spinning AGAIN. So by now i'm pissed. Its fairly obvious the drive isn't working properly, and this explains the slow performance the organization had been seeing on their old file server. So what do I do? Only what any sane IT professional would do with a semi dead hard drive, i put it in the freezer. Yes you read that right, i put it in the freezer. Its a religous thing, the hard drive in freezer trick. Some people say its hog-wash, other swear by it. In our office, its saved our butts a few time, so "I want to believe"
At this point Jay and I decide that while the hard drive is on ice, we will take a walk down to the parking lot and pick up our vehicles from the far corner of the lot and bring them closer, if anything to get outside and get fresh air and not be around stupid dead hard drives... and then we saw something that was just... strange... I think the picture will speak for its self. A box truck, inbetween the two levels of parking.
So after wondering WTF was going on the with the box truck we headed back in to check on our frozen hard drive. We hooked it up, and BAM it started working right off the bat, real fast and everything... and then about 5 minutes into the copy it failed again. At this point i was starting to loose faith that we would get this going. So, we froze it again. Tried it again, and it would go for a while, then fail. This is the point where desperation is starting to set in. I really want to get this server finished by start of business Tuesday. So i thought to myself, "What would happen if i ran the hard drive from INSIDE the freezer"
Yes, thats a power cable, and firewire cable going into the office fridgem which we've moved next to my desk. The sick part? IT WORKS. The hard drive is running, and actually copying data. Its still a bit slow, but the hard drive is still working. I just don't understand, but whatever. ITS WORKING!!
Yup, so that was my night, a hard drive, in a static bag, in the freezer.
So, have you ever had any luck with the hard drive in a freezer? Have you ever gone to this lengths? That was one heck of a night at the office.
Now, time for a blast from the past, an mixer board and outboard rack:
November 18th, 2008 - 00:26
very interesting story…lots that i dont understand cuz well, im not a computer geek or anything lol. but whatever, as long as it worked for you. is that your desk in the pic?
November 18th, 2008 - 09:24
wow, that is a crazy story. go bradley, go!
November 29th, 2008 - 17:18
Hello Bradley, today I got a seriously problem.
I moved all my photos (im photojournalist) from my hard drives to only one hard drive, a Hitachi Dekstar 500 Gb 7200RPM 16MB
I use macbook pro and the copy window just hanged, the hitachi drive just powered off. I tooked off the power cable and turned it on again. Nothing…!
I had a lot of problems with HDD’s, almost of then lost partitions, but, this one is different, because the hard drive doesn’t make any noise!!! nothing!!
I tried the Freezer thing, but without sucess… what can I do??? It’s all the work of my life!
Thank you very much
November 29th, 2008 - 18:06
Hugo,
That’s a bummer man. DriveSavers (http://drivesavers.com/) will give you a free estimate to recover your data. Since your disk doesn’t even spin up… its unlikely that you will able able to get it going yourself.
One other option that only will work if you have someone with another exact copy of your hard drive. (same model number and everything) You could try to swap the logic boards on the disk.. its a REAL long shot, and usually doesn’t work. But, like i said its a long shot, and might save you.
DriveSavers will 100% be able to recover the data off your drive.
I would suggest after you send your drive away for them to save you.. look into a good backup strategy, multiple drives, mirrors, RAIDS, Drobo (http://drobo.com/), BackupPC, rsync, ANYTHING if at all possible try to have your data in as many places as possible. When it comes to data never put your eggs in one basket.
November 29th, 2008 - 20:51
Thank you for your answer. So, I have the HDD on the frezeer, you think it’s not going to work?
I can’t understand how a HDD with only 5 months and little use could damage so easy……
When I connect the power cable to it, I heard a very very track track track, like 8 times and then, nothing more. But is a very low nise and is not like this noise -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWR34wKBNS0
And I don’t fell anything happening inside.
I am from Portugal so, trying a company like that to recover, will be very very expensive… I can’t afford that, so I need to do all I can to recover it for myself..
Thank you
November 21st, 2009 - 23:45
Great I haven’t tried that one yet. My 500G seagate external hardrive is not recognized on any computer, mac or pc. I got it out of the box and put it on another case and still I can’t see my hardrive. It spins and everything but it is not recognize. I don’t know if the freezer will help.
January 14th, 2010 - 21:52
Well it worked for me. Froze a sata drive for about 15 minutes. Plugged it into an external USB hard drive connector. After about 20 minutes on power I plugged it into my laptop and there it was. Got all the data back.
Nice studio by the way. Where is it?
April 20th, 2010 - 00:12
The lesson to come away from here is that you can’t trust a hard drive, even if it’s new. Having your data backed up to a single drive is not a backup if you delete the originals, everything must be on 2 or more drives at all times, otherwise you will lose data eventually.
cheers
April 20th, 2010 - 00:18
I totally agree. As many times as you can get your data copied the better. We have a very robust backup solution that almost everything is on now. That was one heck of a night. so many strange things happened.
May 14th, 2010 - 01:23
Yeah, just make sure you don’t do this with a Solid State Drive cause the cold will totally erase the data
May 19th, 2010 - 00:10
Thank for the posting. It was very helpful to us. Thank you very much.
November 5th, 2010 - 08:44
I have a WD drive that spins up, placed it in an external enclosure and connected to laptop. laptop recognized as a drive but it doesn’t show up in DISKS MMC plugin. The computer sees it as a generic drive. When I run a recovery tool the light on the enclosure flickers but the laptop and any app will not see anything other than the fact that the drive is connected to the computer? TIPS? freezing it does what? should I take it apart?
August 17th, 2011 - 01:23
In order for me to turn my iPhone 3G back on, I have to put it in the freezer for about 5 min… I’ve also found out (out of desperation during a long road trip) that a car’s vent works when the A/C is on high… Lol.