Freezing a Hard Drive - Debunking the Myth

There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding or misinformation about various theories that are supposedly ways to recover data from a broken hard drive. One of the most popular rumors is basically that freezing a hard drive that has failed will result in the drive becoming more stable and allowing you to possible run the drive. The basic theory is that an extremely cold drive will be able to run long enough to possibly allow you access to your files to retrieve them. The internet is littered with stories of people who say it works, and have tried it, and other people who have tried it with no success.

The truth of the matter is that it can possibly work, but only on very old drives, and in very specific situations. Freezing a drive, in the majority of data recovery cases, will actually result in further data loss and damage to the drive. The specific situation where freezing a drive can possibly churn some more life out of your drive is a head crash. Unfortunately for most people, there will be no way for the individual to tell if their drive has experienced a head crash with any certainty. Additionally, freezing a drive in the case of a head crash simply leads to a microscopic shrinking effect of the mechanical parts, which will un stick the platters long enough to run the drive temporarily.

The main point is that freezing your hard drive can most likely result in even worse damage and further data loss. If that data that you are trying to recover is extremely valuable, then any sort of action without the guidance of a professional is a step in the wrong direction. Even if the drive works for 30 seconds or 10 minutes, you can be further damaging the hard drive in the process and permanently losing precious data. A data recovery case that is completely recoverable can quickly turn into disaster when methods such as freezing the drive are used.

The most common problem that data recovery companies run into when trying to recover valuable data is that the user has tried the use of home methods or data recovery software. This is not to say that these methods never work, but when they don't work the drive will often be damaged beyond the point of recoverability. Every extra second that the drive runs results in a higher and higher chance of complete failure. If the drive in question contains information that is extremely valuable it is not advisable to take serious risks with the data because one wrong step can result in permanent data loss.

Data recovery issues eventually come down to how valuable the data is that you are trying to recover from a hard drive. If the specific situation involves data that is not very valuable, there is justification to try a risky method such as freezing, even If the success rate is less than ideal. However, when the data is extremely valuable, or you are using a new age hard drive, these methods do not work reliably and professional assistance from a data recovery company should be sought.