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frozen hard drive allows recovery — 11 Comments

  1. Why don’t you just use an external USB
    adaptor?

    I don’t recommended plugging
    and unplugging Sata and Pata
    while the pc is running.

    PS. Any idea why David (Hartigan)
    closed up shop?

  2. Are you saying: plug a plastic-wrapped, frozen HDD into an external usb hdd enclosure, and then plug it into the PC?

    The sata hot-plug seems to work quite well (I did it about 10 times)… I reckon the order of plugging in the power and data cables is important.

    But its sounds like a great idea for ide HDDs.

    I’m not exactly sure why DH closed up. I believe there were a combination of reasons, one of which was the intermittant workload (and cashflow).

    Its a pity, as he seems to have a similar work style to myself (customer focussed, friendly, helpful, etc).

  3. Apparently, the only way to truly prevent condensation on the drive when putting it in and taking it out of the freezer is to seal it in a vacuum locked bag, best to put it in the enclosure, and then vacuum bag it as far as my understanding goes.

    I’ve never had success with the freezing Hard Drive process, good to know it’s possible tho. thanks dude 🙂

  4. I’ve had success when hot-swapping a 200GB seagate SATA drive I carry around with me. It uses both the SATA data cable from the motherboard and SATA power adapted from a Molex power socket. After reading a thread of opinions on Whirlpool about this question the general opinion I got from it is that SATA and IDE are hot swappable in XP with the right chipset (one that supports AHCI) but is definately not recommended in doing so by either Intel or other chipset makers or the drive manufacturers.

    You’ll probably feel more comfortable that you’re not going to fry anything by hot-swapping with a proper server OS and hardware designed to do so though, but it is possible.

  5. “Are you saying: plug a plastic-wrapped, frozen
    HDD into an external usb hdd enclosure, and thenplug it into the PC?”

    Of course not.

    I have had success in the past with
    the freezer trick.The bag doesn’t
    need to be airtight..

    By the time you resort to freezing HDs
    it’s all or nothing anyway

    Even though many people claim it’s a myth
    It does work if the hard drive problem is stiction.

    If you want the best chance, remove it,
    from the bag and let it warm up for
    an hour or so.

    Rather than mucking around unplugging
    Pata and Sata,get one of these:

    http://cgi.ebay.com.au/USB-2-0-SATA-3-5-2-5-IDE-CABLE-ADAPTOR-R-Driver-II_W0Q

  6. Wow, my ears were burning and everything! 🙂

    Yeah, I closed up because of various reasons – mainly the stress of running the business was starting to get to me. Plus being at home a lot is starting to put strain on my relationship.

    Being self-employed has it’s downsides, especially when trying to apply for finance, even renting a house is very hard when you don’t have a regular income.

    Also a combination of some difficult customers, and a dying motivation to succeed in this business are reasons for closing up.

    I’m looking forward to a 9-5 shit kicking job with no stress, and will get me away from the mrs 😉

  7. What todd says makes sense.
    Anthough I powered the sata drive with a molex adaptor, it still worked. But then the mobo i’m using doesn’t have any sata on the board, I get sata via a pci sata card.
    I also like that usb to 2.5″/3.5″ adaptor on ebay. Something to add to my toolkit!

    I can understand why DH is going 9-5. This is my 2nd attempt at starting a business, so I made sure I got all the help I could, and I did what I could to stack the odds in my favour: – I sold my house in Melb, paid all my debts, and used what I had left to buy a average place in a low-class suburb (dbay) in QLD. So I had no debt, and nothing to “repay”… just living expenses. I also quit my stressful job, and started getting unemployment payments from the Govt… but for a reason: once I’m unemployed, I can apply for “NEIS”, if accepted (and I was), then I (and Mandy) got 12 months on the equivalent of unemployment payments, while starting a business… plus a mentor to guide you, plus the payments are not geared to your business income… what your business gets is “on top of” whatever the govt gives you. We dropped household expenses to a minimum, no credit card, and scraped by with an absolute minimum of advertising expenses… it sometimes pays to be stingy… and sometimes not (see my daewoo post).
    I’ve done a lot of research, but I just finished reading my first “business” book (emyth revisited)… absolutely brilliant… I now realise why McDonalds is so successful (its actually a small business), and the steps i need to take, in order to move CA to the “next level” (and not burn out).

  8. Best of luck to you Luigi, I can appreciate that you’re doing a very good job keeping your business running and also keeping yourself motivated.

    For me personally, it’s not that great. I am only renting (and paying $220 a week), I have an 8 month old son, a stack of bills, credit cards, etc to pay off and a lot of business overheads (around $100 just for advertising).

    Given that some weeks I can bring in nothing, and some weeks I could bring in a couple of thousand, it’s very up and down and the good weeks lowered me into a false sense of security a few times and it makes things hard.

    You seem to be doing very well Luigi, and as long as you and Mandy are happy and things are going great, and you’re motivated, I can see Computer Aid being very successful – maybe one day you’ll get big enough to hire a full time contractor, get the shop front, etc. For me personally, I’ve only really done this business as an experiment and also as a way to spend more time at home with my newborn (first) son – which it has been great, and I feel now is time to move on.

  9. yes, you can hot plug IDE drives. After you plugged them in goto device manager and do a scan for new hardware. I do it all the time. Even work with IDE optical devices as well. But only work with XP.

    You can get yourself a can of freeze spray instead of putting it in the freezer every 5 mins. But the spray were expensive, I used them for diagnose heat related problems with my previous repair jobs.