The Hard Drive Houdini

[N3ko]

I'm not quite sure if this would be a helpful hint but it definitely helped my cousin out. His HD would not work, I don't know the details but he said that he tried everything. He didn't know what else to do so he asked help from a family friend who is supposedly a comp guru. This guy took the HD and placed it in the freezer!!, after about 6 hours of CS he told my cousin to go fetch the HD out of the freezer and to also bring a hammer. Then he did the obvious!!...he banged the HD with the hammer (at the center...the DC spindle motor part), placed the HD back in and it worked fine.

I don't mean to question my cousins credibility, but does anyone find this somewhat odd?

 

[ski]

That trick will sometimes work, but it's intended to get the drive running long enough to save critical files as the drive is probably on its last legs.

 

[N3ko]

lol...I think that is a bit obvious, after such procedures I wouldn’t rely on the drive for longer than an hour.

but why does this work? Is it due to expansion or condensation?

 

[edfair]

The hammer portion at the motor shaft is a little over the line. On one corner in the plane of the disks I could understand.
Both are emergency measures that have basis is fact, although current drives have progressed beyond the problems that these solutions provided.
The problems that were addressed were:
1) Seagate drives in the 80s had stepper motors to drive the heads in and out over the platters. As the drive warmed up the platters expanded and moved the tracks of data from under the heads and you started to get read errors. Solution: cool the drive and run a non-destructive reformatter as the drive warmed up, getting new tracks.
2) Later Seagate drives used a lubricant on the platters that tended to seal the heads against the platters when they sat in place overnight. The seal was tight enough to prevent the motor from spinning the drive up. Solution was to rotate the entire drive and stop suddenly using the built up momentum of the platter assembly to break the seal.

Folk lore, and the occasional success, has kept the methods alive.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[N3ko]

Very interesting...thanks for the informative explanation Ed.

So in the modern day these unorthodox methods would most likely not resolve HD issues...only on old drives.

 

[smah]

You can also find several other similar stories by searching this forum for freezer.

Steve