Linus, the freezer method does not work to recover hard drives - remove your video!

[sf101]

i'm going to get crapped on but while this might not always work it sometimes does work to get platters moving on hdd. ive recovered many hdd over the last 15 years with this technique that would not start/ move/recognize. that does not mean all drives have moved/started/recognized but some have. apart from that sending to a clean room is the next option.

i think when its a case of plater stuck on head this works by breaking the bond. it does not work long term ive had drives start fine and lock up quick so getting what you want quick is esential i usually hit either the pic's folder or the wanted data folder asap and copy that first..

good luck it works but not always how you want.

[Squeetard]

I will say this method has worked for me twice. It worked for drives where the controller chip had problems. Fujitsu had a bunch of bad controller chips in their drives, there was a class action suit against them and they in turn sued the chinese chip maker. They were 20gb disks, it was about 10 years ago. Had 2 of these drives go out on clients and the freezer method worked.

[ha1o2surfer]

It really all depends on the problem. Drop your drive from a 2 story building onto cement and the freezer method will most likely not work. The freezer method might work for drives that have not been abused or have a slight problem reading files or work intermittently. It is a hit or miss and a last resort for the most part if you do not have the money to spend on data recovery services.

[Dr_BenD_over]

We had a crap load of Fujitsu drives go on us at work a few years back. We did the freezer thing on quite a few of them to get them back up and running long enough to get data off them. Now we're a bit more religious about having all the files on a raid array with daily offsite backups.