Give the freezer a shot in a stat bag, then swapping the IC board if you can find another one then it's data specialist time I'm afraid. The longer you can wait the cheaper their services are though

Freezer trick didn't work on mine, it just knocked out a different beat

Strangely enough putting the disk on a radiator and heating it up sometimes works as well.

The freeze helped a bit, when connected it popped up that I'd connected a Toshiba MK4025GAS but it didn't show up as a drive.

How long did you freeze it for?

Leave it in overnight next time and that sounds like a shafted IC, if you can find another one of the same you can borrow the IC board off that to get your data.

There are, of course, risks involved in freezing HDDs, not least that the moisture in the air inside the drive condenses, freezes and then draws ice crystals across the platter of your disks at 7200RPM :eek: (or whatever) ...

If you're likely to use a professional recovery firm, you're better off not trying too much yourself first

If you seal the drive inside of an anti-stat bag then allow the drive itself to get up to room temperature you should be ok. In side of the disk is usually a dried inert gas mixture, and a set of filters to get rid of any pressure build up. Certainly if there were significant amounts of moisture in the air around the platters then the disk surface would degrade very quickly.

The platter coating is actually a semi viscous fluid anyway

TBH I personally would just swap the IC board with another as the problem appears to reside here, but the recovery companies can charge a very high premium (and do) because they know you haven't backed your data up and they have you over a barrel.

If you seal the drive inside of an anti-stat bag then allow the drive itself to get up to room temperature you should be ok. In side of the disk is usually a dried inert gas mixture, and a set of filters to get rid of any pressure build up. Certainly if there were significant amounts of moisture in the air around the platters then the disk surface would degrade very quickly.

The platter coating is actually a semi viscous fluid anyway

TBH I personally would just swap the IC board with another as the problem appears to reside here, but the recovery companies can charge a very high premium (and do) because they know you haven't backed your data up and they have you over a barrel.

Sorry for resurrecting such an old thread, but having suffered a major hard drive failure recently I just wondered whether anyone has had any positive experience of the freezer trick.

Thankfully I had recently backed up most of my critical data from the drive, but had missed the outlook file and some accounts data.

I've been quoted

If your data is very important then better to take the hit and pass it to the specialists.

The more you try to get things working the greater the damage you could be doing to the disk.

If you can cope with losing the data try the freezer trick it does work sometimes. Changing the circuit boards is a good move if you have the 'right' problem. If you are brave you can even swap the disk platters into a working drive.

If you must have your data take it to a specialist.

If your data isn't worth anything and it would be nice to get it but not a big issue if you never see it again have another go.

Regarding swapping the platters into a working drive :eek::eek: I hope you have a clean room as a spek of dust is vastly larger than the data on the drives and also the coating on the surface of a platter is actually a liquid, even if it doesn't seem that way.

Re 2.5" adaptors - I recently bought a USB one off Ebuyer for about a fiver. Very useful tool. Also does 3.5" IDE drives.

Regarding swapping the platters into a working drive :eek::eek: I hope you have a clean room as a spek of dust is vastly larger than the data on the drives and also the coating on the surface of a platter is actually a liquid, even if it doesn't seem that way.

Very much last ditch but I have heard of it working. The older the drive the better as the data will be less dense.

Very much last ditch but I have heard of it working. The older the drive the better as the data will be less dense.

Definitely. I'll repeat what others have said: If the data is very important, pay the professionals before even trying anything. If it isn't *that* important, try the freezer trick or the platter swap. I have seen a tale of that working- the guy did it inside a freezer bag to minimize contaimination. It has a very small chance of working.

If you try the logic board swap, you will need an identical drive.

If the drive is recognised by the PC, however sectors have gone bad, then try a free recovery tool such as CONVAR & PCinspector Data Recovery Datenrettung recupero dati datarecovery rcupration donnes

If the drive is recognised by the PC, however sectors have gone bad, then try a free recovery tool such as CONVAR & PCinspector Data Recovery Datenrettung recupero dati datarecovery rcupration donnes

But only if your data isn't so important you can't afford to lose it as these can cause more damage than good sometimes.