I finally tried that 'freezer trick' on a dead hard drive from 2003

For years I thought putting a failed drive in a ziploc bag and freezing it overnight was total nonsense, just a tech myth. But last month I had a client's old Maxtor 40GB drive with family photos that wouldn't spin up. Out of pure desperation, I sealed it up, left it in my freezer for about 8 hours, let it warm up for an hour, and it actually worked long enough to pull the data off. It died again 20 minutes later, but it worked. I'm still not sure if it's a real fix or just a weird last-ditch fluke. Has anyone else had a freezer save actually work on a drive more than once, or did I just get lucky?

2 comments

2 Comments

riverp371mo ago

It totally works sometimes! I had a similar win with an old Seagate drive that was clicking. The cold must shrink things just enough for a temporary fix. It's pure voodoo, but I'll take it when data is on the line.

spencer_ross1mo agoProlific Poster

Remember when people used to put game cartridges in the freezer? My old Nintendo 64 copy of GoldenEye would only load if you gave it the cold treatment for like twenty minutes first. It felt like performing some weird tech exorcism every time we wanted to play.