Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
From: Keri D.
Hard drive revival:
A technique I have learned is if you bring the temperature of the hard drive down to the
freezing point by putting it in a freezer first and then taking it back out, somehow the
condensation from bringing it back to room temperature helps revive it for about 20 minutes.
It can be repeated about 5-6 times tops. Long enough to get out any important files that need
to be backed up. It has been proven to work a number of times.
From: Christopher Post
How do you bring a hard drive back to life?
My situation:
Half of a volume set goes south on a WinNT server, no good backup and an angry boss
screaming about the data being mission critical.
My solution:
** A bit unorthodox but, it has saved my butt! **
• Turn off the server.
• Take out the failing hard drive and wrap a static bag around it.
• Throw it in the
freezer
conveniently located in the break room.
• Pray for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
• Leaving the hard drive in the bag, quickly plug the drive back into the server. (Just plug the
in cables and go.)
• Cross fingers, turn it on, and move all data off the drive as fast as you can! Then add a tape
drive and start backing the dumb thing up!
My so-called logic:
Metal contracts when it is cold.... so the platters shrink and increase the clearance for the
read/write heads.
From: Chris Poole
Put the drive in the freezer for about a week and then you can usually get one last read off the
drive.
From: Cheyenne Robert Alspach
Here are some drive recovery tricks that have worked for me, in the order that I do them. Try
booting the drive and copying the data off after every step.
1. Hold the drive upside down, making gravity change the head geometry ever so slightly.
Vertical is also another option.
2. Slightly rap the drive with your knuckle, (but nowhere near hard enough to damage the
drive).
3. Try the drive in another machine, (slight drive voltage change assumed to be the miracle
worker here).
4. Rap the drive just SLIGHTLY harder than you did above in 2.
5. Freeze the hard drive in the freezer for two hours, and place in a plastic zip lock bag to
prevent condensation from forming on the drive when you plug it back into the system, (head
