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Comment by werid | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like the old harddrive trick where a harddrive refuses to start until it's cold enough.

I confirm here that one day, about ten years ago, I managed to save a harddisk on which I had important data for which I had no backup (well, I had backups but I had lost/forgot the gpg key to decrypt them which in a way is even more stupid than not having backup at all: false sense of security).

You could hear the HDD "wanting" to start but failing. I searched the net like crazy because I really needed the data kinda badly: I even considered trying to find an identical, used (but working), HDD and swapping the controller.

Eventually I found a message (somewhere on Usenet I think) saying that some failing drive may start when cold enough... So I did put the HDD in the fridge. After the 2nd try I managed to boot it and to copy all my data and it's the last time that that drive booted!

So, as crazy as it sounds, the fridge/refrigerator trick was working in some cases... And I take it that the grill/heat thinggy may work in some cases too :)

It's called "stiction" [1] and it used to be a very common way for HDs to fail. I haven't seen it so much any more.

You could also hold the drive in your hand and rotate it in a jerking fashion to try to unstick it. I remember doing that successfully a few times.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

I unbroke an iPod 5G by slamming it into my desk fairly hard. That was about 3 years ago and it's still working. Something about the HDD bearings seizing because of shock.

I have a Seagate HDD in the freezer for 2 years now. Every method of recovery I've used has been unsuccessful. I'm waiting to send it into a recovery service, and $1500+ that I haven't got lying around.

While doing desktop support, one of my Mac user's hard drive was failing, wouldn't spin up at boot. So you had to help spin it up. One trick was to give the HDD housing a rotation jerk the moment you turn on power. Another was to use a pencil eraser to spin the exposed spindle, also during power on.

Good times.

I've talked to a few recovery experts. They told me taking the cover off destroys the drive. Apparantly the head has some tracks embedded in the cover. If it's not removed in a certain way you can rip the entire thing out.

I don't think he removed the cover. The spindle was was exposed, not the platters.

If the drive has files that you haven't "needed" in over 2 years, do you really want to spend $1500 or more to access them? Must be personal photos or videos?

I'd hate to lose my personal photos. I'm glad that Apple came out with Time Machine, because I now have backup religion; not only time machine backups but offsite CCC backups.

It's a great trick. I've managed to image a couple of drives that had failed with the help of some long SATA/power cables and a nice chilly freezer.

How do you guys invent this stuff? It wouldn't cross my mind... ;)

Learn how computers work, some mechanical physics knowledge would be helpful. You need a bit of education in order to rely safely on Googled advice, and if in doubt: don't do it!

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