I have read many pros and cons (on this forum and others) about cooling a failing hard drive to increase your chance of data recovery. We all know that too much heat with computers, drives, etc. can cause problems. That combined with so many "it's worked for me" stories leads to me believe it's worth a shot.
My question is this…what cooling method do you suggest. I see a few options
- Dedicated, highly ventilated external chassis
- Refrigerator
- Freezer
I know of one forensic examiner who currently has a drive in a freezer and has been actively (and slowly) recovery data sector-by-sectors for several weeks now.
Anyway, I found some decent external chassis for about $50. All the water cooled approaches are basically for CPUs and targeted at gamers. And Target sells some pretty cheap refrigerators that could cool a drive as well as premium quality six pack (we gotta have standards).
Any recommendations or specific experiences would be appreciated.
Although I remember reading somewhere that the "myth about freezing hard drives wasn't true," at my previous employer a couple of the techs would freeze bad/dying drives in order to get some data off of it.
I tried it myself recently on a drive I have here at home, but the drive was too far gone for it to be effective (although I did get farther in the imaging process before it crapped out).
So it's probably going to depend on how far along the damage to the drive is really.
Tom
Hi to all…
I will choose Dedicated, highly ventilated external chassis…
What you will think?
Freezing a drive MAY work depending on the fault.
Electronics can be made to work if the failure is down to thermal runaway.
and sometimes evven mechanical tolerence.
However there is a SERIOUS issue.
All modern diskdrives have a breathing hole to deal with pressure changes.
Consider what happends when you cool or heat air, you get a breathing effect, you have to be very careful that your cooling does not pull damp air into the drive , which will loose it's water when it hits the cold metal parts. inside the actual spindle area.
Lots of silica gel, SEALED plastic bag (or airtight metal container acting as heatsink), assemble power & connection cables to it, cooling fan/ heatsink
warm the drive > 60 deg. (non operating)
leave it for a day, let it cool naturally , which will pull the dry air into the drive, then cool it down ,which will pull further dry air into the drive.
Whilst it is sealed and if possible whilst it is in the cooler with an additional cooling fan ,operate the drive.
It is not a good idea to cool it , then bring it to room temp, as the metal parts will warmup faster that the integral platters, which may very well trash the drive.
try to operate it in the cool box.
If it all works for you, consider yourself blessed, finally bring it back upto room temp INSIDE the bag.
last , do not be clever and try to take the drive down to something stupid like -25 deg C, minus 1-2 is fine.
Really , the correct way to recover is use "smart" software that leaves damaged areas until last, each time you read a damaged area , you can actually trash the drive head.
Which is why "spinrite" is dangerous, because it just keeps banging away for hours.