Placing a hard drive in the freezer can temporarily fix it and allow for data recovery, but it is best to seek professional help. The hard drive should be placed in a plastic bag to prevent moisture damage and installed immediately after removal. It may provide up to 20 minutes of functionality.
It may help to put a hard drive in the freezer. This could provide a quick fix in case a hard drive fails and a computer user needs to recover data. Placing a hard drive in the freezer is said to cause its parts to contract and return to their correct place for a short time. When it works, it can allow the computer user to get up to 20 additional minutes of life from it. In most cases, this fix is only used to recover data from a hard drive that is no longer spinning.
The best method for recovering data from a failed hard drive may be to seek help from a computer professional. It is possible, however, that placing a hard drive in the freezer will cause it to spin long enough for a person to recover at least some of their data. This fix is usually applied only in cases where the hard drive has stopped spinning, which could mean that its damage is physical. If the drive is still spinning, however, an individual might do well to try a different method to fix it.
Typically, a person who wants to try this solution places their hard drive in a plastic zip-up bag before placing it in the freezer. This helps prevent moisture from further damaging the hard drive. An individual may also consider using an anti-static bag to enclose the hard drive before placing it in the zip bag. This extra step can also help protect your hard drive. Once securely enclosed in a zip-top plastic bag, the computer user can place the hard drive in the freezer for a couple of hours.
After leaving a hard drive in the freezer for a couple of hours, a computer user typically removes it from the freezer and immediately installs it into their computer. It is imperative that a person trying this fix copy data from it as quickly as possible, as the hard drive will likely only be functional for a short time. In some cases, a person using this method can keep their hard drive running for about 20 minutes, but this isn’t always the case. A person can also try freezing the hard drive for a bit longer in an attempt to spin the hard drive longer and provide more time for data recovery. For example, placing a hard drive in a freezer for 24 hours can sometimes provide additional data recovery time.
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