Re: [tlug] Rejuvenating Dead Hard Drives by Freezing Them

[Joe Larabell <larabell@???>]

> 3. Parts expand and contract with temperature changes.  Freezing would 
> make some parts marginally smaller, so if it were a mechanical problem 
> of something sticking, the slight downsizing through shrinking could 
> free something up....

Other components on the board (resistors, capacitors, etc) can also change 
value with temperature. If a marginal component goes out of spec when it
heats up, it could affect things like clock generation/recovery and other 
timing-related stuff.

Long ago I had a Micropolis drive that would work for the first 10 mins 
the machine was powered up and then would fail. I stuck it in the freezer 
and went to lunch. When I came back, I tried it again and it stayed up 
long enough for me to copy the data off -- after which it went straight to 
the trash.

If you have *another* disk of the same model that you can spare, you can 
also try swapping the electronics. If the drive is spinning and not making 
a lot of noise when it does so, there is a chance that the failure is in 
the electronics and not on the platter. If that doesn't work, you can 
always swap them back, so the originally good disk doesn't completely go 
to waste. I actually did that on another Micropolis of the same type (at 
one time I had lots of the exact same drive). If you do this, make sure 
you only remove the PCB and don't accidentally open up the drive itself.

--
Joe Larabell -- Synopsys VCS Support      US: larabell@example.com
http://wwwin.synopsys.com/~larabell/   Japan: larabell@???