Put Your Hard Drive in the Freezer to Recover Data
Posted on September 5, 2006
Filed Under Hardware, Tips | 96 Comments
Have you ever had a hard drive that just wouldn’t boot and all you could hear was it making a clicking noise? If you have then you know this is usually a bad sign. However, there is still some hope. In most cases you can use this little trick to retrieve your files. Just follow these simple steps.
The first thing you want to do is remove the drive from the computer and put it in a sealed plastic bag to avoid condensation. Then put the drive in a freezer and leave it overnight. When you are ready, pull the drive out of the freezer and hook it up quickly. Boot up the drive and start backing up the files. Act quickly because you may only have around 20 minutes to do this. I have seen some reports however, of this fixing the problem all together.
Yes I know this sounds crazy and believe me I thought it was until I actually saw it work. I’m not exactly sure why this works but I’m guessing it has something to do with the heads retracting because of the cold temperature. If you have had any experience with this feel free to post about it.
Other Posts You Might Like:
- How to Recover Data from a Crashed Hard Drive
- How to Permanently Wipe All Data from a Hard Drive
- How to Restore Deleted Files After Emptying the Recycle Bin
- 18 Portable Apps that Every Tech Needs
- Top 10 Mac Repair Tools
Comments
96 Responses to “Put Your Hard Drive in the Freezer to Recover Data”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe
Subsribe to RSS Feed
I am a computer repair technician for a major movie studio and have been fixing computers for over 10 years and I can say that this is the first time I have ever heard of this type of “repair”. However I could see it working, at least in the short term but I seriously doubt it would actually repair the drive for any lenght of time beyond data backup. If this works for you immediately backup your data. DON’T EXPECT THIS TO FIX YOUR DRIVE PERMANTLY OR AT ALL AND REGULARLY BACK UP YOUR DATA, IF YOU DO YOU WONT HAVE TO WORRY! Also I would double or triple bag the drive if you try this because you really don’t want moisture in around or on the drive at all.
Reply
Paul Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 10:50 am
Freezing your hard drive was a major fix for the old IBM deskstar drives, they had a high failure rate with the platter warping in the heat causing the heads to hit the platter making the clicking noise.
by freezing the disk you make the platter less ‘warped’ giving you a chance to read the disk before it begins to warp from the heat.
Reply
Yes I agree Josh that no one should rely on this to fix the problem permanently. I would just recommend using it long enough to backup your data and restore it to another drive. I did, however, read another article where a guy said his drive was still going strong a year later after doing this. I probably wouldn’t trust it though.
Reply
I have used this technique for many years to recover data from dead drives. If you have a failing electronic component, it may work fine when cold, but dies once heated. If it’s a mechanical problem, cooling down the drive will allow the lubrication in the mechanisms to thicken giving a few minutes of usage to recover data before failure. I had one drive that was so bad once that I had to hose it down with the liquid refrigent from cans of compressed air every 30-40 seconds. I have since relocated my small fridge in my lab next to my test bench with a external USB enclosure in the freezer portion. This is a disaster recovery technique and will not fix a problem with the drive. So once you get the drive operational, get all the data off that you can before it fails again.
Reply
Good idea John with moving the fridge to the test bench. I can also say that I have seen this technique work. As said above, always back up your data so that you don’t have to worry about failing hard drives.
Reply
This is also the same for microsoft xbox hard drive failures. My friend’s xbox died on him and I can’t remember if he called microsoft or if he found it on a wesbite. But it temporarily fixed it so he could get his saved information off of it. So it does work, just temporarily.
Reply
I started using this technique a few years ago when working as a desktop technician for an automotive parts manufacturer. We would often receive laptop from our general managers that would no longer boot (toshiba satellite series). Once we determined that the drive wasn’t spinning, we would place them in an anti-static bag and then inside 2 ziploc brand freezer bags. Once frozen over night, we took them out and transfered all the data and then ordered new hard drives.
Reply
Dry ice?
Thank you for posting this, it sounds like a great trick and makes plenty of sense. Has anyone tried using dry ice instead? The ice does not melt (since it is solid CO2) and should cool the drive to at least -20 to -30 degrees Centigrade, if not lower (the ice itself sublimes at -78 C).
Reply
[...] Another option is to try a very successful method I discussed in the previous article titled Put Your Hard Drive In The Freezer To Recover Data. [...]
I’ve used this process several times. I am always impressed when the drive allows me to pull files from it.
One time when it did not work, I filled a zip lock bag with extremely hot water and placed it on the cold drive. The temperature differential seemed to free the bearings in the drive allowing me to get at the data
Reply
As one who has worked intimately with designers of HDD’s I can tell you there are may things that may cause this to “work”. In the case of “permanent” recovery, the cause is usually a stuck voice coil (moves the heads). Sometimes a surge will cause the voice coil to move farther than it is supposed to, and temporarily “jam” internally. This is a consideration that is usually accounted for when designing HDD’s, although manufacturing tradeoffs can allow it to occur under extreme circumstances, such as when the drive is very hot & the voice coil is overdriven, because of metal expansion the heads can move to a position they normally wouldn’t, causing a jam. One other mechanical problem might be the circuit board itself. One small bad solder joint when heated enough will lose contact due to heat extension, and when cooled make contact again. The same can be true for a crack in the copper trace layer on the circuit board. These can be almost impossible to trace down having done it for HDD mfgr “autopsies” (they want to know why a drive failed too)
One other strange thing involves the silicon electronics. I have been wokring with solid state devices since 1970, and I never cease to be amazed by a phenomen I occasionally see, whereby “silicon” repairs itself. A shorted transistor will un-short, and then perform normally. Usually this is accomplished by cooling the device. I think that the contraction must re-connect the silicon atoms somehow.!? Sometimes they have been subjected to very high voltages, and cooling them has rarely causd them to work again. I have had components that fail under heat & when I cool them with “Freeze Spray” they recover & wokr normally until they heat up again. In rare instances, they never appear to fail again – very weird
Reply
ryan Reply:
February 21st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I tried the freezer trick with my freeagent external. The first time it didn’t work. The second time I froze it for 2 days, took it out, and was able to transfer one small folder at a time. If I tried to move a big file it started knocking again and I would have to turn it off and turn it back on again. After about 25 minutes it started working perfectly and I was able to transfer large files. I’m now on day two and the drive appears to be permanently fixed. I don’t understand how it works but it does.
Reply
I have a Maxtor that went bad in 6 months. Sounds like the arm is stuck. I am going to try the freezer method, sounds silly but I am ready to try anything to get this thing to work…
Reply
I wonder if anyone has ever put the drive in an enclosure and kept it in the freezer or fridge and ran the cables back to their computer? Could this make it run long enough to recover large amounts of data?
Reply
I want everyone to know about my experience with my hard drive. I had seen this posting about freezing the hard drive to get it to work. I had my laptop hard drive crash after a vacation where I had downloaded all vacation pictures and no backed them up. Besides having around 3000 other family pics plus all my family history material. I had sent my hard drive off to have data recovered. They told me $1500.00. I could not afford this sum. I thought what did I have to lose. I would try this method. My hard drive was majorly damaged they said. The first two times of freezing did not work. The third time I froze the hard drive only in two freezer zip lock bags for 20 hours. When I tried it no such luck it still made the horrible clicking noise and would not reboot. It kept telling me to put in the system recover disk. I left it running for awhile hoping that maybe it was too frozen. After about 20-30 minutes, it quit making the clicking noise but was still giving me the intel boot failed messages. I did CTRL ALT DEL the screen went black. Nothering happened and then I thought maybe it went off. I started the computer again and lo and behold I swear it started booting windows xp up. I held my breath and got my external hard drive plugged in and I swear on my childrens lives I got almost two hours of it working. I downloaded 4,484 pictures and anything else I wanted. I was through so I turned it off. I turned it back on and it wouldn’t work again and of course was making the horrible clicking noise. I can’t still believe it but this is the truth. I am so grateful. To me with my family pictures saved, it is a computer miracle. Thank you Thannk you, Thank you.
Reply
Thank you for the great advice! It worked like a charm! After a hard drive failure, I gave up trying to get my data back and bought a new one. I was ready to toss the old one away, when I read this article. It not only worked long enough to get everything back, it’s still working fine as a second drive. (and I learned to back stuff up more often)
Thanks again.
Reply
I didn’t know how to take the hard-drive out of my laptop, so I just put the entire computer in the freezer over night. I guess I didn’t use enough bags because when I took it out there was condensation all over it. Not wanting to short it out, I let the computer dry out for 48hrs before turning it on. It started up with no problem and it has now been working fine for the last two weeks! Crazy! I have backed-up all my data and was going to toss the laptop, but now I am going to see how much more life I can get out of it. It’s only 7 years old!
Reply
I just found out today that my hard drive is dead. I called every data recovery business and as Beverly stated they want 1500 or more. I have very priceless pictures on my hard drive of my children. What is the best type of zip lock bag should I purchase or do I need to buy something more durable
Reply
A regular zip lock bag should be fine. Just make sure that no moisture can get in.
Reply
So, I have a Western Digital External HDD that stopped working (something about cyclic redundancy?) while I was trying to transfer a massive amount of data from it to a new external. Now, when I turn it on by plugging it in, it tries to boot, but ends up ramping up, then clicking, slowing back down, ramping up, clicking, etc. again and again…so I promptly unplug it…
Any ideas if this freezer thing will work? I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try…do I need to take out the internal part to freeze or can I put the whole thing in there?
Thanks!
Reply
Sam,
You will need to put the whole drive in there. Just make sure you put it in a zip lock bag first.
Reply
I have used the freezer technique twice and was able to recover the data to a working primary drive. I have also tried “Component Cooler” spray also on some drives. I think I’ll try CO2 next and see how that goes.
Reply
Ok, I have the same clicking (I could use a better word) problem. So tonight ill grab a zip-lock and try it. I’m getting different times to keep it in the freezer though. Any accurate or “safe” times to trial this??
Reply
Although this technique works in certain circumstances, there are many cases where it will not. Freezing had gotten a lot of mileage in recent years as a recovery method, but most people that have touted it hve no idea why it works, or when to apply it. Their good luck may be your bad luck if your problem is different than theirs.In 99% of the cases that it works, it is because of the head arm. For those of you that may not know, the heads ride above the surface of the platter at a predetermined distance. When the platter is not spinning, the heads are at rest against the park post, and sitting on the platter. When you power up the drive, the heads and arm do not move away from the park post to 0 sector until the motor is at full speed. This is because the distance between the head and the platter is actually caused by the air currents in the drive. When the platters spin, they obviously create air currents. The inside of the drive, and the aerodynamic design of the arm catch this air current and the air current causes the heads to float at a certain height. If the drive motor slows, or you have a power brown out, the heads can hit the platter, causing a “head crash”. I said all of that so it is easier to understand why freezing works.
If the motor starts to slow from age or whatever, or something happens to the drive that the heads aren’t floating at the right height (too low), they won’t read the sectors properly. When this happens, the drive tries to reset itself by sending the heads back to the park post and then setting out fresh to find 0 sector again. When the heads continue to not find 0 sector, this cycle repeats continuously, and the clicking or knocking you hear is the arm hitting the park post. The clicking itself is not harming anything, although it sounds bad! What the freezing does is increase the distance between the head and surface, re-establishing that gap. It is only in this instance that freezing will work. If the heads have crashed or are dead, which will also cause the clicking because the heads can’t read anymore, freezing will do nothing. If heads are dead, then heads are dead. Here is a little tip to tell if your heads are dead, or if there is still life in them and something else is the problem. Plug the power to the drive without hooking the drive to the computer. Just power. If the clicking starts immediately, either the heads or the controller are dead, and no freezing or anything else will get your data. The only fix for this is a clean room to replace the heads first. If there is a 2 or 3 second or more pause before clicking, or you hear the arm seeking before the clicking, then freeing might help. The problem with freezing is that it is a path of no return. If you freeze the drive and DON’T get what you want, most times the clean room can’t even help you now. So only use freezing as a last resort and when you KNOW the budget doesn’t allow a clean room.
Reply
Hey Ste,
Leaving it in the freezer overnight while you sleep should be sufficient. You could probably get away with leaving it in for a shorter time frame but this is usually how long I leave it in for.
Kevin,
I really appreciate your clarification and insight. It makes a lot of sense.
Reply
I have not tried freezing a drive yet, but was thinking if putting the drive in a bag and using one of those vacuum sealing machines for food storage would be good to keep moisture from entering?
Reply
Everyone talks about drive failure I’m wondering what are some of the failures that you guys are having. I get invalid boot disk. Is this something that a freezer might fix for a few minute
Rick
Reply
One of my college buddies told me that I should freeze my hard drive to recover data and back it up to a new drive. I looked at him like he was messed up on drugs, but I listened to him and decided to give it a shot. To be completely honest it actually worked. I placed my hard drive next to frozen pizza and chicken nuggets and left it there for 4 hours. Than I used this frozen hard drive as an external drive to recover data from it to my new already installed drive in the computer. I was really excited to see that this trick worked, from now on I tell people to do the same and they look at me as I was tripping on something.
Reply
I tried freezing it but all that came up afterwards was ‘invalid boot disk,’ just like before i froze it. Would it work if I froze it and tried again? The only change that occurred was that there was less noise coming from the drive. It used to make screeching noises, and now it does not. If I tried again, would it get better? Please advise. Thanks.
Reply
Hi Lillie,
Unfortunately, this isn’t a guaranteed fix so if it didn’t work the first time it’s probably not going to work if you try it again. Your only other option might be to send it off to a data recovery service.
Reply
Oh, alright, thanks Casey. I hope they can at least fix it for me.
Reply
I’m going to try this later today…I have 160 gigs of precious data(family pictures,videos,years old data) on a Samsung SP1614N I cant retrieve(yes I know back up)
Excellent advice above, after spending ages trying all sorts I stumbled across this site.
I will let you know how it goes
Tcm
Reply
didnt work…….oh f*ck…….deep frozen it for a go next week when i get back from Russia.
Reply
can someone recommend the best software for recovering data from a crashed harddrive. it is showing up in windows explorer but will not let me access it. I want to try use software before putting it in the freezer.
Reply
Snx,
Maybe this article will help. http://www.caseytech.com/how-to-recover-data-from-a-crashed-hard-drive/
Casey
Reply
After a power outage computer would not start.
Bought computer with basic CD rom drive and Xp
Pulled the old hard drive and froze it over night WALLA couldn’t believe it booted when I put in new computer. You are a miracle worker
But now I can’t send files to Cd Rom.works fine reading material on disk but cannot send files to it.
Shows up as F drive. when using SEND TO or SAVE AS ’says Selected drive not in use. Check disk to make sure disk is inserted is inserted”
I’m elated to have my old files back but now I can’t save them on disks in case it ever happens again
Hope this is not off topic. Greatly appreciate any help
Lou
Reply
Hi.
Good design, who make it?
Reply
Hey! Everyone I told about this idea told me that it was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard-especially all of my tech loving friends. I tried it because I had nothing to lose, and to my shock and happiness I was able to access my drive and pull about 35 gig of data before it failed again. I couldn’t believe it!!!! All of my friends were amazed. Thanks for the advice.
Reply
Also, apparently reading more about my drive this failure for no apparent reason is nothing new. From everything I’ve been reading stay away from Western Digital My Books. Any suggestions on a good manufacturer/external?
Reply
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the comments. I’m surprised that you have been informed to stay away from the Western Digital My Books. We use them at work and haven’t had any issues with them. I especially like the My Books that contain dual hard drives for mirroring. That way, if one fails, your data is still safe on the other. As far as other brands of external hard drives go, I’m not sure.
Reply
Hi Folks,
I have 6 WD HDs, and this Summer I put them away in a drawer for about 2 months. When I plugged them in again last week, 2 of them would spin up, click 3 times, spin down and then repeat that cycle. Both drives would then show up in Device Manager, but not in My Computer or Disk Management. Tried changing USB cables, power bricks, uninstalling all USB controllers etc. No luck! I’ll try the freezing thing now, before attempting to plug them directly into my computer case. WD’s response to me on their support line was useless – basically: “Sorry Guy, sounds like you have bad drives. Bring ‘em to your local computer expert, maybe he can do something”. WD – bah!
Reply
Hi Kilian,
So did the freezer trick work for you?
Reply
RE-FREEZING THE DRIVE
I needed to recover over 100GB of data from my disk. I used the freezing trick and it worked first time but I only manged to get 10GB of data. I therefore returned the drive to teh freezer to refreeze it. This worked.
I have repeated the process over 10 times now and have continued to get data from the drive. HOWEVER, the drive is gradually getting worse (which I am not fussed about cause it is covered by the warrenty).
Finally – in my experience adding a bag of frozen pees to the top of the drive (make sure it remains in the sealed bag) seems to lengthen the usage of the drive….Happy Days.
Reply
I’ve got a 160 gig Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 that does seem to get spinning but then it clicks once
and the data light goes off.
My laptop has Xp on it for an operating system.
When you plug the drive into the USB port It starts to see the drive then it pops up a message that there is a problem with the device.
I have been using a known good external HDD case (brand new in fact)
The reason I know the case works is because I have another drive that does work in it.
Its 6 degrees outside (Ya gotta Love New York weather) so I put the Drive in a ziplock bag and opened up my grill and set it on the bun warmer shelf.
I have 50000 or so songs on this drive.. I hope this works.
I will post my results.
I left it out there for 1 hour I’m sorry to say this did not work.
I am going to leave it out there over night to see if that works.
Reply
My daughters Mac Book, still under warranty, seems to have died, with the whirring noises described in the above postings. All that we want to recover are her photos. Her docs are all archived. When she tries to start the computer all she gets is the flashing “?” mark. It won’t go any further. I don’t know how to remove the hard drive and wonder if i can freeze the entire computer if i seal it properly? Also I wonder if removing her hard drive and reinstalling it will void the warranty diminishing her chances to either get the computer fixed or replaced. Thanks for any advice.
Reply
Casey Reply:
March 8th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Hi Robert,
I’m not sure if just removing your hard drive to recover files off of it would void the warranty or not. Give Apple a call if you want to be certain. If you do want to give it a shot, iFixit.com has a very good tutorial on how to remove a hard drive from a Macbook. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Browse/Mac As far as freezing the whole computer goes, I have no experience. However, I don’t think I would even try it because I’m not sure what effects it might have on the LCD screen or the battery. Hope this helps!
-Casey
Reply
Mark Reply:
March 14th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Hi Robert,
I have a macbook sitting in front of me with the exact same problem. Unfortunately the freezing trick in our case didn’t resurrect the drive. I would *not* recommend putting the whole laptop in the freezer. You run the risk of condensation forming on the electronics when you take it out, and likely other than the Hard drive failing the rest of the laptop is fine.
Anyway, good luck!
Mark
Reply
hello ! thank you for the great tip ! It has saved the data from my hard drive. I had a LaCie 250GB external drive which had a mechanical failure and thought I had lost all my files. I put in in the freezer for 24hrs wrapped in 2 Ziploc freezer bags, fired it up and recovered the data. I’ve purchased a WD hard drive since, so I hope it is better, I will definitely be backing up more often. Thanks again – good luck with yours.
Reply
I’m going to try this with my 250gb drive, really hope it works and I’ll let you know….sounds crazy to me though!haha! Going to get the ziplocks tomorrow.
Reply
So I’ve just tried this, and ran into a problem immediatly. My computer finds the disk (Im using a swedish version of XP so i dont know all the terms in english) in disk management, but it doesnt show up as a drive when double clicking My Computer. What do I do?
Reply
I just bought a hard drive enclosure and saran wrapped it closed after adding the clicking hard drive in it. I then froze it for 2 hours left it is the freezer and punched a hole where the power goes and the usb plug goes. then attached it to my laptop and was able to copy the data from the drive to my laptop. Thanks everyone for helping me out.
Reply
I have connected a laptop to my harddrive (in an external enclosure) while it is in the freezer. It looks pretty funny with a usb cable running out of my freezer but it gives me unlimited time to backup important files, kinda like Aaron…
Reply
I just took my failing WD myBook and, with firewire and power still attached, wrapped it in saran wrap, then paper towels, then saran wrap again and put it in the freezer of my mini-fridge. I’m leaving it in there for a day before i try to fire it up and get my data. Hopefully I can be another cinderella story like some of the earlier posts…
Reply
Brian Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Hey Paul,
Did you have any luck with putting your MyBook (with power still connected) in the freezer and then pulling the data off?
I want to try this method too – but is there any danger with having a power cable plugged in to something that’s in the freezer?
Reply
Casey Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Hi Brian,
I think Paul was talking about putting the actual hard drive (not the whole computer) in the freezer while the hard drive was attached using a firewire cable. I would not recommend putting the whole laptop in the freezer as this could cause serious problems to the LCD screen, battery, and other components. See Robert’s question on March 8th as well as our replies.
Reply
Casey Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Sorry about that, I misread your comment. I’ve never tried this method and don’t know if there is any danger to this or not. Maybe Paul will be able to give us some insight.
Paul Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Hey Fellas,
Worked like a charm! I took my myBook (the external hard drive) with the power and firewire cables plugged in to the hard drive but not the outlet or computer and wrapped it very very very heavily in plastic wrap and paper towel.
My base layer was paper towel and then I alternated heavy layers of plastic wrap with a layer of paper towel. The goal here was that the paper towel would absorb any moisture that tried to sneak in. I was also very careful to seal the wires with electrical tape so that no moisture could sneak though. Then I left things in my freezer over night.
The next morning, I just plugged things in. I had about 30 minutes of usage. Then back to normal. I was able to get into a routine of a few hours in the freezer to about 30 minutes of usage until I got almost all of my 300gb of files back. I was even able to unwrap the old HD after I was done to send it back to western digital for my refund.
So go for it, and good luck.
Paul
Brian Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Thanks for all the info Paul and Casey – and everyone else, I’ll give it a shot.
Brian
Casey Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Yes, thanks for the reply Paul. Very helpful!
Hard drive making noise, getting to windows progress bar on vista but bar keeps going across and not getting any further. used pre boot diag software and getting error code ‘biohd-8′ and the hard drive fails the test, as well as clicking sound ever 2 – 4 seconds. hard drive in 3 freezer seal bags for last hour. will leave it there for 12 hours.
Reply
able to scan for a problem they get the (Not Responding) thing at the top and will not close till I unplug my external drive. This same thing would happen to the external itself if I try to access any folder on it. The hard drive makes no odd sounds and spins as usual. I have asked if this could be some type of virus and all the times I asked people told me no it’s not one. One thing I know I did before it stopped working was leaving it sitting on top of my laptop over night. I am not sure if the heat could have messed it up or not but I have done this many times before. I would really need to know if anybody has had this same issue and I would need to know if the freezing trick could help or need to know if it could hurt anything.
Reply
I was completely skeptical. I thought this was a joke. I had visions of trying this and looking like a fool. I can NOT believe this worked. This saved my ass… literally. 15 years of assets, gone, now saved. Thank you to the guy who figured this out… you are my hero.
Reply
I got a seagate 500gb sata drive in February and the other day my pc just stopped working. using an older WD 160gb ide i can get my pc going again but the computer wont recognize the sata drive, i have also tried this with a sata drive as well. in the bios it detects the 500gb drive but windows doesnt. i have used PC Inspector File Recovery and to no such luck it did not find the drive either. the drive seems to spin up but does nothing after that. will this work or does anyone have any other recommendations?
Reply
i have a sony vaio vgn-fs630/w. it will start up windows and then freeze (but sometimes respondsive) and sit there making a click click sound every 2 seconds. its deffinitly from the hard drive. does anyone think this might help or have any othere idea of what to do? thanks. any help appriciated
Reply
I’ve a external maxtor basic 1tb for only 6mths and have nearly 700gbs of data on it, recently it made the clicking sound lk every 5 secs and it is totally undetectable, i would like to try the freezing technique but i wonder should i place the entire harddisk with its casing in the freezer? or I must remove the casing and leave only the harddisk itself? Removing the case seems like a bad option as it totally void the warranty, so i have no chance for exchanging it after that…
so, is it ok if i do as mentioned but only thing is to place my entire harddisk with its casing in the freezer? will it work as well?
Reply
Casey Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Hi Superb88,
You should be able to just leave it in the casing as long as the hard drive itself can still get cold. Hope it works!
-Casey
Reply
thx casey, i tried the trick, leave it in my freezer for 12hrs, didn’t work unfortunately, hard disk still clicks away…and remain entirely undetectable
Reply
Casey Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, it sounds like you’ll be forced to send it off to a data recovery service. Although they can be pricey, they usually have a pretty good success rate in cases like this.
Reply
Eric Reply:
September 26th, 2009 at 7:45 am
superb88 were you able to recover your data, it sounds like I have a similar situation.
Reply
So I have a Macbook, with a hard drive failure. Called Apple support and after they scolded me about not backing up my data the guy mentioned that he himself has placed his hard drive in the freezer and been able to retrieve data. When I asked him how, he clarified that he could not recommend this as a solution, and that removing my hard drive would likely void my warranty. But he again repeated, that he has known that this freezing thing works. He suggested 3rd party software – Disk Warrior, which I bought and did not work. I think he was trying to throw me a lifeline with the freezer tip, without losing his job. Is it more or less or just a likely to work or not with a Mac versus a Pc based hard drive?
Reply
Casey Reply:
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:08 am
Macs and PCs both use the same type of hard drive, they are just formatted differently. So this technique will work just as well with a Mac formatted hard drive as it does with a PC formatted hard drive.
Reply
I’m having the same problem with my 3 year old WD MyBook 500gb external drive – the clicking noise, and then not working afterwards. I’ll try the freezer idea tonight/tomorrow.
But I was wondering: is there any danger if i plug the power cable (and the usb cable – but not worried about the usb part) into the drive while the drive is still in the freezern and then hook it up to my laptop? Someone mentioned doing it that way above, and it makes sense, since most people are saying that as the drive warms up, it’ll stop working again. So sounds like the best thing would be if you could keep the drive in a “frozen” state while pulling all my data off.
Any thoughts/suggestions?
Thanks a TON for this freezer idea people, i wrote all my data off when i heard the dreaded clicking – but now i’m very optimistic again!
Reply
Casey Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Sorry about that, I misread your comment. I’ve never tried this method and don’t know if there is any danger to this or not. Maybe Paul will be able to give us some insight.
Reply
I’m always hearing of this trick working. My brother’s ipod classic 3g started having hard-drive failure. I knew it was HD failure because I was able to hear the hard drive trying to go on and off, and it just kept restarting itself. Anyways I took the HD out of the ipod, and stuck it in the freezer over night, and the next morning everyone was amazed that it worked. Whats more amazing, I did it 3 months ago… and no more problems at all.
Recently my hard drive started messing around, and I was getting “Disk read error occured” and I couldn’t boot up my PC at all. I stuck it in the freezer, and now it’s been going for a week. Still no problems.
How I think this works is the reading head gets worn away, and loose after some use. I noticed that I could always boot up my computer in the morning. So the freezer might be shrinking what was stretched out over time.
Reply
my problem on my hard drive maybe different but its always a good thing to ask. well, i partitioned my 4 year old hard drive into 3 equal sizes and installed mac extended journaled. they were working fine until i have to move 70 GB of files to my Macbook. It froze on me so i force quit and restart the computer. i open it again and it saying that i have to back up my files and reformat my hard drive. But then 1 of the partition is still showing up and every time i copy from it, it will take forever and doesn’t do anything. pretty much freeze my computer. so i tried right now im trying the freezing way and we will see whats gonna happen.
if theres any other way out there, appreciate it for any help.
Reply
so i yeah.. i tried this method and it didnt work for me… i left it there for at least 24 hrs and still just one partition is showing uo and it doesnt copy anything on that partition. So, im guessing that im one of the unlucky person to try this experiment. is there any other way how to recover harddrive failures especially a mac extended (journaled) formated disk or non HFS Plus disk? i really need whats in the harddrive. thanks for any help!!!
Reply
I have a Toshiba 500gb external hard drive and as of yesterday afternoon has been working nicely. Then when I plugged it in after a few hours all i got was the clicking sound for a few seconds then the light will go off and would still be clicking then the light would come back on and the clicking would go away. But the device wouldn’t appear in My Computer. After reading all the testimonials I wrapped my ehd in 4 sheets of paper towels and put inside 2 ziplock bags and into our freezer. I’m sleeping on it and try to retrieve my files tomorrow. I’m keeping my fingers crossed too.
Reply
Seagate barracuda 750GB, something lite fell on it:
I had that clicking, too. I froze it at -4 Degree, started and after spinning up the clicking was only ones. That looked promising. I froze it to -10 degree in my camping freezer box and than I heared a lot of different stuff, one click, than something that sounds like a rubberball would fall on a surface, and than it stopped spinning automaticly, all in one session! Next try after I let it come back to normal temperatur and freezing down -14 degree I have got for a second a USB recognition on my XP, a window opened but without data, and you could here the arm searching. Next try a little scatching sound came up by seaching, and that made my stop the attemts.
Well, not for me this time – thanks for the info
Reply
so, im on my computer just browsing the web and my harddrive stops working. i could hear the arm in the harddrive make a klink noise and then it stops moving, no more activity from my harddrive. the computer freezes and then i get the blue screen of file dumping.i restart and it is stuck in the BIOS so i turn it off.
faulty harddive? how do i stop this. do i have to export my data to another HD or just reboot?
Reply
I have the infamouse Seagate st31000340as 1TB drive’s when they first came out. There was a firmware error on all the drives coming out of the factory in china so I was able to send it back and have it reflashed when it started to fail. A few months after having it back however, it started making a clicking noise and would not be reconized by the bios. Ive been sitting on it not using it or my computer at all for the last 4 months, and finally order a new Western Digital hard drive with a real f*cking warranty this time. After receiving it i decided to try my old drive one last time… and the f*cking thing boots up just fine. It gets really cold in my room, im guessing maybe over the corse of 4 months it fixed itself? Ive backed up my photos and what not, and am currently going on 4 hours and the drive is fine. I’m pretty confused, and pissed off at seagate for such a sh*ty drive. I suggest everyone fedEx their shipments for now on, I think the constant shipping of my seagate drive via UPS may have helped lead my hard drive to failure. Has anyone else had their hard drive stop clicking on its own?
Reply
Does the freezing trick work on external hard drives? Can I just put he entire unit in the freezer, or do I have to manually take out the hard drive?
Reply
Kimberly Reply:
March 25th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Ryan;
I have put my whole lap top into the freezer for an hour & it’s working just find right now. Anything is worth trying; when you don’t have a whole lot of money to put into repair that may or may not work.
Reply
I am so excited to try this. I have a hard drive that crashed over a year ago. I was told that the repair would cost me $1500. I dont have 1500 cents let alone $1500. Two companies and a close friend tried to recover my lost data with no luck. I cant wait to try this out and see if works. I have photos on that hard drive of animals that have passed on. I really pray that this works.
Reply
I know this does sound crazy. But, it really does work & I did it to my lap top and it’s stilling running. When I was told to do this to my lap top hard drive; I was thinking “YEAH RIGHT”…this wont work; it’ll mess up my lap top worse then it alredy was. But, I trusted the person that told me to put my hard drive into the freezer & it did really work. Last longer then 20 minutes & is still going strong. I useally have to do this about every month.
Reply
Your article is very good! Helpful to me, I have learned a lot of things, very grateful!
If hard drive crashed, that’s a huge losses, so we need some technical knowledge about hard disk recovry, backup, format, partition and hard drive upgrade to solve our hard drive failure problems
Reply
I’ve used this method a few times and it does work! not in all cases, but if all your other attempts to get a drive working have failed, it’s a pretty good last resort.
I first used it about 8 years ago on a hard drive from my old G4 powerbook, and it worked like a charm. 4 or 5 hours in the freezer (inside TWO ziplock bags, just to be safe) then i popped it into an external drive case and the drive spun right up. i was able to get all my data off that drive, but i couldnt write TO the drive.
and you know? that drive sat in a drawer for 6 or 7 years unnoticed, but last year i pulled it out just to see, and plugged it in, IT STILL WORKED! read only, still, you couldnt write to it, but the data on my once-dead drive was still there, and fully intact.
moral of the story is if your drive is dead and nothing else works, give it a shot! what’ve you got to lose? you may just get your data back.
Reply
lol its funny because that was a little trick only the really good techs new back then(about 15years ago).
Reply
Paul Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I remember those days! xD
stupid IBM Deskstar POS drives… i can still hear the clicking of my old 40GB drive taunting me and laughing at all my lost data
BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP! just back up the non-replacable files…. music and videos can always be found online again but your pictures and documents most likley won’t.
Reply
I have a lacie 500 gb external HD, something messed up and it would show me all my data but when trying to access any folder it would immediately freeze up. I tried the freezer trick and sure enough! I recovered about 10 gb worth of valuable Video clips. It quit after 10 gb so I stuck it back in the freezer(I waited a full day before sticking it back in). Next time I tried, It told me all folders were empty. Although in properties I could see the drive still contained all data. So, it seems like I only got one shot.
Reply
Just worked for me. Had to try it 3 times, but last time I connected power to drive, it came up, got all the data off. Very happy.
Reply
Here’s my issue. I accidentally plugged my laptop transformer into my wd external drive. After i’d realised my mistake i took it out and plugged the correct one in. Nothing. Thought and hoped maybe it was the cicuit board on the caddy that was damaged so bought a new caddy and fitted the hd in that. Nothing although when i take out the hard drive it now makes the bing bong noise as if it’s recognising there’s something there which it didn’t do before. My question is has anyone had this problem and is it fixable. As i didn’t know what the issue was i tried the freezer but this didn’t work. I can only assume it’s the board on the drive that’s damaged. Is there any way of checking this or indeed replacing the board. Help
Reply
my WD external hard disk had been partitioned into two, for mac and for windows, since the mac version contains all of my itunes music, i have been plugged it into my macbook pro the whole day. i didn’t realize when it was exactly the mac version had become not detected, probably when i was buffering radio, since i didn’t experience any cut off songs like normally do when the power of the hard disk got cut off. these past 2 days, the power had been cut off and on, since i’ve got problem with my electrical plug.
i’ve tried to restart my mac, plug it into my cousin’s macbook, still can’t detect the mac version. it can only detect the window version. the disk utility also can’t read the capacity, and the mount point status was not mounted. the hard disk work just fine, no clicking sound or anything, but only the mac is not detected.
my question is, is the on-off electrical source cause this? and why only my mac version that is not detected? could this freezer solution fix this, even though only half of the hard disk has the problem?
Reply
I have tried to place in the freezer for 1 full day and even 2 full days but it still cannot read the external disk.
i am doubt that this matter works!!!
Reply
Makusi Reply:
July 7th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Kevin, you should try pouring liquid nitrogen and maybe it will work??
Reply
Kevin, you should try pouring liquid nitrogen and maybe it will work?
Reply
im gonna try it lets see if it works, all i can say is that the person i love, did give me a 1.5Tb external hardrive seagate,as a gift, i feel really sorry because she give it to me and then i broke it the same day she gave it to me, it fall down and it was completely my fault, she was feelling sorry because she buy to me to save my anime and music and important documents in there, but she did cut my things to the hard drive and i lost everything i told she that , all of that was my fault, that i dont care about a material thing because she is the most important thing in my life, but she feells bad because she was the want, that cut my things to past them into the external hardrive, all i can say is that im gonna try it freezing, the hardrive and im gonna try it for a second or maybe a third time cause i believe in that it will work for the better to recover those pictures that we have in there when we first meet each other, and i wanna try it just because of her, but if it doesnt work, if i lost all of my things, still i will love her because she is the one that makes my heart spin just like the hardrive and no one can fix it, just her, just because i found a love like her.
Reply