Just found a way to recover a dead hard drive with a freezer trick

I had a client's hard drive fail on me last Tuesday. It was a 500GB Seagate from like 2012 and it wouldnt spin up at all. I tried all the usual stuff like swapping cables and using a different SATA port but nothing worked. Then I remembered an old trick someone told me about years ago. I put the drive in a ziplock bag and stuck it in the freezer for about 3 hours. When I took it out and hooked it up it actually started spinning and I got all their photos off. It only worked for maybe 20 minutes before it died again but that was enough. Has anyone else used this trick or is there a better way to get data off old drives?

2 comments

2 Comments

colesanchez1mo ago

That must have been such a relief to get those photos back, dude.

tyler_hall91mo ago

I mean, I had a similar scare with my phone a couple years ago when I dropped it in a puddle. I let it sit in a bag of rice for like 48 hours before even trying to turn it on, and then I backed everything up to Google Photos immediately after. That was the real game-changer for me, honestly. After that, I got in the habit of just letting it auto-sync every night so I don't have to think about it anymore. Idk, it just makes me less paranoid about losing stuff now.