I had some recent hard drive recovery luck after a bad crash. I put the drive in the freezer and was able to get most of my data off of it.
What Happened
I had a short trip to Las Vegas to do a demo yesterday. The car temp gauge said 114. After the demo, we were in the parking lot talking (in the crazy heat) while my machine powered down and I threw it into my bag. This morning my data drive was singing a horrible song… it had failed. My laptop never really shut down and it cooked the drive.
What I did
Somehow, I remember hearing a trick to get data off by freezing the drive. The drive would respond for about a minute, then it stopped, so heat made sense to me. I dropped it in the freezer for about 4 hours. I couldn’t wait any longer, so I just pulled it out and dropped it into my external drive caddy.
Viola! it shows up and I am copying data off of it! I am very happy. I just got back some key files. There are some very large VM Ware images (over 100 GB) that I am going to try and pull, but I don’t know if that will work or not.
Conclusion
Is it a drive I can keep using? Probably not. Am I happy I got 1 key file? YES! That is a successful hard drive recovery for me.
I do backup all of my data, but it has been about a week since I’ve done it. My bad. Was it a complete loss? No. Getting that file and a few others is very worth it. 67 minutes to go for the VMs. Wish me luck.