Sometimes Unconventional Means Don’t Work But Don’t Be Discouraged

A few posts back I was looking into reviving a hard drive using unconventional means (in this case putting it in the freezer) based upon anecdotal evidence on the web that supported this method. Sometimes in technical support positions you have to think outside the square and when conventional methods don’t work there may be latitude to try options that are a bit out of the ordinary (so long as the risks are minimal or acceptable).

Unfortunately, in this case, there wasn’t a completely positive outcome in that the drive did spin up but the drive heads appeared to be damaged whereas the drive refused to spin up when I first received it. Software utilities weren’t going to budge the drive in its original state so other measures had to be tried. Despite this result, people may be discouraged from taking such drastic action in the future but it all comes down to taking calculated risks and attempting solutions with the least irreversible or unrecoverable impact and then working your way up.

So would I recommend putting a hard drive in a freezer?

I guess if all else fails and it doesn’t look like you will be claiming under a warranty of some sort then you might choose to go for broke and give it a go. At the end of the day though, this highlights how critical backups of your data can be when your hardware lets you down. It amazes me how people only have one copy of precious data like wedding photos, family videos or legal documents and then suffer a hard drive crash prompting them to attempt any means of data recovery.

So please, if you don’t already backup your data then go buy a couple of 2TB external hard drives for $99 each, backup your data to both external hard drives and then take one offsite. For $200, is your data worth the risk?

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