Freeze to revive the dead

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Aushvill

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I had been out-stationed on an internship for past 2 months,(education) and have returned only yesterday.

I had left my DELL Studio 15 at home, to my brother ,all by himself,as I dint want to carry along my personal notebook, my institution provided me with a laptop.

On returning, I wanted to transfer data to my DELL.
So I booted it up..

The thing doesn't proceed beyond BIOS screen.
The HDD was making a "clicking" sound.

I had known about the notorious "CLICK OF DEATH", and the catastrophe they cause.
Bearing the clicks as a warning, I shutdown the laptop and refrained from further attempts to restart it .

Searching through the Internet confirmed my worst fears.

It seems very clear ,from all the preliminary info that I managed to obtain, that the HDD is no more along with it the data too..

I dont regret losing the drive (covered in warranty), however the data was very valuable to me...

First thing, I googled out specialists (in INDIA) who perform data recovery from non functional HDD's. (Though I knew that I had to pay them a fortune for their services.)
I called one of them- CBL , who seemingly have a great record,and inquired of the details.

They confirmed an 85% chance of recovery, with a service charge ranging from Rs. 15000 to Rs. 95000, - a price I JUST CAN'T AFFORD at least at this time.

With no options left whatsoever, I googled for alternatives ,if any.

Two prominent results emerged :

1. Freezer trick - place the drive in the freezer for a day or so , then remove it out , and , for several people this has caused the drive to revive allowing just sufficient time to backup the data.

2. Tapping on the drive - while the disk is powered on "tap" (gently or rigorously) on it.This may cause the heads to realign and drive to function normally.

Now, I do understand that this is a risk , n that anything that goes wrong in the application of the alternatives will narrow the chances of the professionals.

I want you all to provide me more info on these alternatives - whether anyone has found them to work OR if there are other tried alternatives found to work.
I only want to backup the data,its my life's work - my academics and notes for the completion of the book that I was writing, and most important of all photographs and vids of my grandpa, who is no more.

Whenever I confronted a problem I have always sought out help from HARD FORUMers who have given an unbiased opinion to sort the difficulty,evident from my previous posts.

This time around, its even more serious.

To provide you all with background details.

The drive in question is a SEAGATE Momentus 5400.6 500GB

As for the most common comment "you shud have backed up your data" , I had started backing up data on DVD's , when I ran out of stock,and at the same time got a call from my institute for an internship, an opportunity I long awaited.

I had even purchased a WD 1 TB to completely backup all the data onto a mirror drive.But t'was too late....

I haven't eaten food nor slept well in 2 days, my heart just sank and continues to. I have my exams coming up,but the depression wont let me study.
I just dont know what to do.
I also know I cant blame anybody,but me,for my present state.

Please guys, let me know if freezing the drive after packing it in ZIPLOCK packs will cause it to work although temporarily..
or if there is anything else that I can do.
 
All I can offer is that I've seen two clicking dead drives get revived from freezing. One was alive for about 20 minutes, and the other lived for about 3 hours before clicking again. If you get it working, you gotta work fast.
 
freeze it, see what happens. forget about tapping it, can't imagine it would do anything good to the drive.
 
How should I go about the process of freezing up the drive.

Besides ziplocking it, I also plan to add silica gel (desssicants) in the ziplock pouch.

Thing is for how long shud I leave it in the freezer ??

and theereafter shud I immediately connect it to my laptop or ..wait for it to come to room temp...????

Please provide me with the essentials on this....
 
freeze it for a few hours, take it out, plug it into your computer and see if it works while it is still frozen.
i'd suggest making a new OS drive and just using the frozen drive to recover data, I would not try booting from it.
 
Ziplocks aren't anti-static, and I'd want the drive to be in a metal-coated anti-static bag, or at least in a pink anti-static bag.

Tapping only helps if something is stuck (like heads sticking to the platters -- sticktion, but notebook drives park the heads off the platters) or the motor has trouble starting. Apparently the tapping should be done with the drive firmly on a table and the finger flicked against the thumb. It may be necessary to cycle the power on and off because if the drive doesn't spin soon after power is applied, it probably turns itself off. A long time ago, one manufacturer recommended holding the drive in the horizontal plane and quickly rotating the wrist to make the platters move, to unstick heads or move the motor to a different position where its coils can provide more torque.
 
jiminator said:
freeze it for a few hours, take it out, plug it into your computer and see if it works while it is still frozen.
i'd suggest making a new OS drive and just using the frozen drive to recover data, I would not try booting from it.
Click to expand...


... as for the new booting drive ... I have no options...
 
do any of your friends have desktops? if so run over there, freeze ur drive at their house and use their computer. just plug in your drive to on of their sata ports and boot of their main drive. then you have a sata connection and if it works just highlight and drag and drop to one of his/her hdd's . once its done plug in ur new wd drive and transfer what you got off their drive




+1 to antistatic bag. pick one up at frys and make sure its sealed so you dont get condensation on the drive
 
What will antistatic bags do if they are not completely sealed with a moisture absorbing package and if they are sealed how will the drive be connected? I recommend instead performing this operation in an environment where the relative humidity is low.

Cross your fingers, place it in the freezer for an hour or more, say some incantations, then plug it into your computer and be ready to immediately browse and copy to another drive. If you are in a place where 'winter' is present I recommend taking advantage of a dry chill outside to prevent condensation from forming on the frozen drive in a more humid home. Move a computer and kvm outside and prepare everything for the moment the dead drive gets taken out of the freezer. Time is of the essence but if the drive functions for a while then clicks freeze it again and repeat.

Aushvill said:
... as for the new booting drive ... I have no options...
Click to expand...
install an operating system to another drive or use family/friend systems. the idea is to prevent your drive from warming up or getting stressed performing work that is not directly benefiting you by copying your important data off it. if the drive is sata make certain by testing beforehand that the mobo, sata controller, and OS realizes hotswap attached drives without reboot and have the system all up running and ready to copy when you plug in the frozen drive.
 
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I've never heard of the "tapping" thing before, but it make sense - if the heads are stuck because of a scratch in the platter, tapping the drive might get them unstuck.

For the OP - I wouldn't worry about it. As long as you're willing to spend an unlimited amount of time getting the drive working, you'll fix the drive eventually. You may not get ALL of your data back, but you'll get most of it.
 
I have tried the freezing trick around 50 times. It has worked maybe 5 times. So far that's about 10% success.
 
ribs1 said:
I have tried the freezing trick around 50 times. It has worked maybe 5 times. So far that's about 10% success.
Click to expand...

Same here, though I have had only a few be successful, and they barely lasted long enough for me to recover the data.

OP, don't use seagate if you can help it. I know some people really like them, but their barracuda drives are horrible.

In my lifetime, I've only had 1 maxtor and 2 WD drives die out of hundreds.
As for seagate, I've had about 50+ of their drive die.

The only good seagates I can account for are their Cheetah drives.

Next move you make, get a WD Blue/Black drive, they are great for OSs. Samsungs aren't half-bad either. ;)
 
Red Falcon said:
Next move you make, get a WD Blue/Black drive, they are great for OSs. Samsungs aren't half-bad either. ;)
Click to expand...
My 2TB Samsung HD204UI, built in Oct., is the first HD I've bought in years that shows some very slow sectors (> 150ms, < 500ms access time in MHDD, a DOS program) during diagnostic scans, and they're not the same ones on each scan. Running the factory low level format hasn't helped, and considering that some other people have reported the same problem with these Samsungs, I'm worried.
 
larrymoencurly said:
My 2TB Samsung HD204UI, built in Oct., is the first HD I've bought in years that shows some very slow sectors (> 150ms, < 500ms access time in MHDD, a DOS program) during diagnostic scans, and they're not the same ones on each scan. Running the factory low level format hasn't helped, and considering that some other people have reported the same problem with these Samsungs, I'm worried.
Click to expand...

Well I know the F4s are supposed to be fast, but I've only used a few samsung drives. So far they are working well. Those seek times don't look good though, hopefully it's just a firmware bug. :(
 
Red Falcon said:
Well I know the F4s are supposed to be fast, but I've only used a few samsung drives. So far they are working well. Those seek times don't look good though, hopefully it's just a firmware bug. :(
Click to expand...
Those aren't seek times but sequential read times. :(

I don't think I'm going to buy any more Samsungs. About half those I got in the past vibrated too much, tech support is the very worst in the industry, and Samsung chopped 2 years off the 5-year warranty of my 750GB.
 
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