"Freezing the drive could theoretically return the head stack to its original orientation," Reinert said. Heat from the drive can cause elements in the head stack to expand, putting the drive out of alignment. The head stack is the assembly that controls the movements of each read/write head in a hard drive. A white paper from Hitachi discusses the benefits fluid-bearing motors bring to hard drive designs.Ģ. Reinert also noted that nearly all modern drives use fluid-bearing motors which produce less friction, and therefore less heat than ball-bearing motors."Ī drive that's been around for several years might still be using a ball-bearing motor, but most drives sold in the past few years use a fluid-bearing system. That said, modern drives use far fewer components on the PCB than before, which means less heat and fewer individual points of failure. When the drive is put in the freezer, the materials shrink back to their normal orientation and the connections are reliable (until the circuit board heats up again)."Įlectronics failure is the most likely symptom to be addressed by freezing a drive, since chilling the electronics can delay thermal expansion of weak solder joints. "In some cases, this can cause the solder connections on the circuit board to be unreliable. "The chips on a circuit board (PCB) and the motor in the hard drive itself generate heat, and most materials expand slightly when heated," said Reinert. I'll list three technical reasons that freezing a malfunctioning hard drive might fix it, along with Reinert's thoughts about why this practice might not be a good idea any more.ġ. According to Reinert, freezing a faulty drive might have been beneficial once upon a time, but is no longer recommended. So I contacted Jim Reinert, vice president of data recovery and software products at Kroll Ontrack. Jim ReinertVP of data recovery and software products, Kroll Ontrackīut why would putting a crashed hard drive in a freezer revive it? I figured the people who might know the answer to this question would be the folks who perform data recovery for a living. When the drive is put in the freezer, the materials shrink back to their normal orientation and the connections are reliable.
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