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I've always been exceptionally skeptical of the freezer claim due to a lack of any real comprehensive explanation as to how it works or any actual study that ge

by csydas 10y ago

I've always been exceptionally skeptical of the freezer claim due to a lack of any real comprehensive explanation as to how it works or any actual study that gets even a base number of failing drives that were temporarily recoverable as a result of the freezing. I'm not convinced that the result would be any different if the drive was simply allowed to rest and tried later. Every explanation has talked about parts expanding and contracting, but given how easy it would be to demonstrate this by simply disassembling the drive and doing before/afters, I feel incredibly skeptical of such a claim and see it more as a wild guess than anything. All that being said, even though I see it as voodoo, freezer is still my last stop with a drive when everything else fails, though I still let the owner know that I'm not expecting any results.

ivraatiems 10y ago
That's what I was gonna ask -- what is the logic by which this method works? I understand how "baking" a graphics card or other piece of hardware can extend its life, but not how this saves HDDs.
- leaveyou 10y ago
  From what I understood, the "freezer method" could work only in case of mechanical problems caused by wear. For example physical wear of the various hard drive bearings could lead to miss alignment of the read/write head and the tracks on the disk, therefore forcing the drive to operate at a lower temperature than "normal" tightens these bearings and reduces the miss alignment at least until the hard drive heats up again.
keyle 10y ago
Same it's kind of an old school myth. It gives you something to do I guess. That said, it worked for me once, I was able to mount my old spinning disc for a few minutes using ice packs attached to both sides of the drive and tied with elastics :)
dogma1138 10y ago
It's not a "myth" I've done it to 3 drives when their heads got stuck 2 of those it worked afterwards one of those worked for over a year. My personal theory is that it shrinks enough to release the seized heads and unlike striking on the side of the drive with a rubber mallet you don't run the risk of damage to the plates due to a head strike. It could also be that the shrinking fixes/temporarily aligns something in the surface mounted components, maybe it breaks some tin whiskers that grew between the solder balls under one of the chips or w/e but I've seen electronics revived before after being frozen and brought back to temperature usually that doesn't last that long after. I've brought back to life quite a few HDD's via various means the most common of which was replacing the controller board with an identical one, mechanical failures were harder to fix but the freezing thing does seem to work in some cases.
- csydas 10y ago
  I don't doubt your technical prowess for repairing HDDs, but my skepticism is based largely in that despite how overwhelmingly well known it is, it's never been really tested in a formal setting and the explanations have never gone beyond just "expanding and contracting", with no deeper explanation. Aside from everyone's stories about how it worked, there really isn't a lot of good solid knowledge about whether or not it actually does anything. I'm not doubting stories where it went into the freezer and worked; quite the contrary, I'm more than willing to believe that was part of what was done to do it. What I question is whether or not it was the actual freezing process that did anything, if there actually is a physical change that occurs beyond people's speculation. It would seem to me that if there is a physical change going on with the drive, it should be visible, or at least a difference ought be visible in a before an after, save a few minor parts not visible to the naked eye or without further disassembly. The fact that there really hasn't been any research on this, even amateur, despite the number of server farms, kind of makes me wonder if it's not just a bit of old voodoo.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Freezing (as well as sharp acceleration) can unstick the mechanical parts of the HDD quite often the arm that moves the heads up and down the platter. In my case i could hear the "ticks" of the arm stepper motor they were gone after a day in the freezer. And I've seen an iphone that would not work you put it into a freezer for 1-2 hours, take it it turns on, after about 1-2minutes it dies again and you could repeat it. There are probably so many things that temperature could affect when it comes to electronics that I'm not sure if there is even one thing that a research could easily focus on.

by csydas 10y ago

ivraatiems 10y ago

That's what I was gonna ask -- what is the logic by which this method works? I understand how "baking" a graphics card or other piece of hardware can extend its life, but not how this saves HDDs.

leaveyou 10y ago
From what I understood, the "freezer method" could work only in case of mechanical problems caused by wear. For example physical wear of the various hard drive bearings could lead to miss alignment of the read/write head and the tracks on the disk, therefore forcing the drive to operate at a lower temperature than "normal" tightens these bearings and reduces the miss alignment at least until the hard drive heats up again.

keyle 10y ago

Same it's kind of an old school myth. It gives you something to do I guess. That said, it worked for me once, I was able to mount my old spinning disc for a few minutes using ice packs attached to both sides of the drive and tied with elastics :)

dogma1138 10y ago

It's not a "myth" I've done it to 3 drives when their heads got stuck 2 of those it worked afterwards one of those worked for over a year. My personal theory is that it shrinks enough to release the seized heads and unlike striking on the side of the drive with a rubber mallet you don't run the risk of damage to the plates due to a head strike. It could also be that the shrinking fixes/temporarily aligns something in the surface mounted components, maybe it breaks some tin whiskers that grew between the solder balls under one of the chips or w/e but I've seen electronics revived before after being frozen and brought back to temperature usually that doesn't last that long after. I've brought back to life quite a few HDD's via various means the most common of which was replacing the controller board with an identical one, mechanical failures were harder to fix but the freezing thing does seem to work in some cases.

csydas 10y ago
I don't doubt your technical prowess for repairing HDDs, but my skepticism is based largely in that despite how overwhelmingly well known it is, it's never been really tested in a formal setting and the explanations have never gone beyond just "expanding and contracting", with no deeper explanation. Aside from everyone's stories about how it worked, there really isn't a lot of good solid knowledge about whether or not it actually does anything. I'm not doubting stories where it went into the freezer and worked; quite the contrary, I'm more than willing to believe that was part of what was done to do it. What I question is whether or not it was the actual freezing process that did anything, if there actually is a physical change that occurs beyond people's speculation. It would seem to me that if there is a physical change going on with the drive, it should be visible, or at least a difference ought be visible in a before an after, save a few minor parts not visible to the naked eye or without further disassembly. The fact that there really hasn't been any research on this, even amateur, despite the number of server farms, kind of makes me wonder if it's not just a bit of old voodoo.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Freezing (as well as sharp acceleration) can unstick the mechanical parts of the HDD quite often the arm that moves the heads up and down the platter. In my case i could hear the "ticks" of the arm stepper motor they were gone after a day in the freezer. And I've seen an iphone that would not work you put it into a freezer for 1-2 hours, take it it turns on, after about 1-2minutes it dies again and you could repeat it. There are probably so many things that temperature could affect when it comes to electronics that I'm not sure if there is even one thing that a research could easily focus on.