A player puts their hard drive in the freezer to save data. But what is behind this method and how safe is it really?
A gamer explains on reddit that his HDD gave up shortly after the warranty expired. There is a kind of electronic alarm that comes from the drive. For this reason, the user explained that he put the hard drive in the freezer. Because this trick is supposed to help make the hard drive briefly usable again.
Freezing trick helps with certain damages, but only temporarily
What kind of trick is this? The method of “freezing” is primarily used when certain components of the hard drive, the bearings, are damaged. Both the spindle and the write and read heads of the hard drive are connected to a bearing.
The “freezing trick” consists of putting the drive in a waterproof plastic bag and then placing it in the freezer. If you leave it alone for a few hours, the cold cools the metal so much that it contracts and, in some cases, frees the hard drive to spin.
The trick was then used to make a hard drive briefly usable again to save important data.
Other damages, when the hard drive is no longer running smoothly and suffers from so-called imbalance, cannot be fixed or bypassed by this method.
Is this method worth it? No, many experts advise against putting a hard drive in the freezer. The strong temperature differences also cause components to contract. This can lead to irreversible damage.
Moreover, you must be aware that condensation can form inside the hard drive if you are not careful – even if you put the hard drive in an airtight bag.
The colleagues from PCWorld additionally explain that modern hard drives are now designed in such a way that the “freezing trick” may not work anymore: In modern drives, the distance between a head and the plate is slightly less than 10 nanometers.
Did the trick help the gamer? No, so far he has not been able to revive his hard drive. In the meantime, he has posted 3 short updates in his article. After 3 hours, there was still the beeping sound, and after another test, the hard drive still did not come back.
