[DM-MUG] Internal Hard Drives Shopping

[Matthew W.]

I've done this multiple times without Ziploc. Some drives nowadays  
appear to institute heroic efforts to correct themselves. I've worked  
with two drives for weeks, a few hours each night, to resurrect files  
before each would spin back down. I'd put them in a mini fridge that I  
use just for this purpose to cool it down just enough but not enough  
to create condensation upon removal. I've pulled files from both  
drives and they'd go longer and longer before spinning down. After  
recovering files, each drive would allow a reformat and I've used them  
ever since with no problems. Takes patience and some drives,  
certainly, may not respond to this coaxing, but these did. Took a lot  
of patience. Very strange.

Mw

On Feb 2, 2009, at 9:58 AM, Bryan Baker wrote:

> I'd think any kind of enclosure would lower your usable time by  
> trapping the heat the drive produces inside it. I think this might  
> be an ideal application for the "universal" cables that (iirc) newer  
> and weibetech sell that adapt just about any internal format (ide/ 
> sata variants anyway) to USB2 or firewire.
>
>
> On Feb 1, 2009, at 9:42 PM, Matthew Nuzum wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 6:17 PM, CW Smith <cwsmith7 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> • Put the HD in a Ziplock back to keep frost from forming on the  
>>> drive and
>>> to keep condensation from accumulating when it comes out
>>> • Freeze overnight (12 hours or so) to assure uniform temperature
>>> throughout. If you have a deep freeze in your basement, use that  
>>> instead of
>>> your kitchen freezer
>>> • Keep the HD in its Ziplock back as you attach it to your  
>>> external case or
>>> drive dock (not inside the computer), again to keep condensation  
>>> from
>>> accumulating
>>> • Attempt recovery while the drive is still COLD, giving you more  
>>> time
>>> before the bearings in the spindle heat up and seize again
>>
>> I've done this, it worked. You don't have long so make sure you're
>> ready. You may want to do a test run of the software recovery on a
>> good hard drive to ensure you have every thing you need at hand and
>> know the procedure. in my case I didn't wait 12 hours (probably 3
>> hours) and got 2 - 3 minutes of use out of the drive.
>>
>> I did not have the luxury of a USB drive so maybe you could make
>> better use of the time by putting the drive into the USB enclosure
>> before freezing it so that when you're ready you just have to plug  
>> the
>> usb port into an already running PC. That saves you the 45 seconds  
>> for
>> the computer to boot up plus the time to hook up the cords and stuff.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Matthew Nuzum
>> newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
>> _______________________________________________
>> DMMUG mailing list
>> Use this Address to send mail to the list:
>> DMMUG at dmmug.org
>> Use this page to modify subscription options:
>> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/dmmug
>
> --
> Bryan "ka-klick" Baker
> Singer/Songwriter
> ka-klick at ka-klick.com
> http://ka-klick.com
> http://twitter.com/ka_klick <-- Twitter Feed
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> DMMUG mailing list
> Use this Address to send mail to the list:
> DMMUG at dmmug.org
> Use this page to modify subscription options:
> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/dmmug