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flabasha · Dec 2, 2007, 04:25 AM

Well, not saved, but close enough...

My Ti 1ghz Powerbook finally had a component fail after 4 years - unfortunately it was the hard drive. It suddenly began to make a grinding sound, then kernel panicked. Probably unwisely, I attempted to reboot, and got the dreaded question mark. Big nervous gulp, as I'd just done a lot of creative work since my last (recent) backup. Tried single user boot, Diskwarrior, the whole nine. Nothing could see the drive. Dead, dead, dead.

So I heard about the freezer trick, figured what the heck, picked up a 19 buck enclosure from Fry's, put the drive in a ziploc, then in the freezer for 6 hours, popped it in the enclosure, plugged it in... and like a bolt from above, there was my drive!

Knowing my time was short, I quickly dragged everything over I could... and about three minutes later, the drive began to groan again, and gave up the ghost. But sure enough, I got EVERYTHING I needed off of it.

If you ever have a drive fail, without question, try the freezer trick. It could save your a--, or at least a lot of cash from those data rescue places (which, come to think of it, probably are just warehouses full of freezers...)

Hallelujah, my data's back!

cms · Dec 2, 2007, 05:14 AM

This is a well-known short-term solution and is just great!! I have saved many clients' data by doing what you just did and certainly don't charge them a ridiculous amount of money for doing so like data rescue "specialists" do.....! There is, of course, an obvious mechanical/technical reason why the freezer trick can sometimes be successful in resurrecting a busted drive-- at least temporarily. But thanks for sharing and reminding people that sometimes the simplest and seemingly least-likely solutions are the best.

ghporter · Dec 2, 2007, 09:37 AM

Note the phrase "short term." This technique should be used as a means to resurrect the drive for long enough to back up the data on it. After that, consider the old drive to be dead-it's not terribly likely that keeping it really cold will make it exactly reliable. So everyone thinking "hey, I can just put my drive in the freezer whenever it acts up and I'll be fine", you're fooling yourself.

peeb · Dec 2, 2007, 01:12 PM

How about Time Machine as an investment?

Frugle · Dec 4, 2007, 02:58 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

How about Time Machine as an investment?

how about reading the thread first?

I'd just done a lot of creative work since my last (recent) backup.

peeb · Dec 4, 2007, 03:48 PM

Right. I'd read the post, but if he'd been using time machine, he'd have lost (maximum) an hours work.

cms · Dec 4, 2007, 04:40 PM

And as it turned out, thanks to the freezer trick, he didn't lose anything that he really needed. One point worth noting is that not everyone wants to or can upgrade to Leopard. And for some on older Macs, it's just not an option. I am guessing a four year old Ti book might struggle.

peeb · Dec 4, 2007, 04:48 PM

He was lucky to be able to recover the drive - if he doesn't want to upgrade, that's fine - no one's forcing him to, but it is certainly an option for that machine - it will likely be faster, and the backup option could save him a lot of pain.

SEkker · Dec 5, 2007, 01:47 AM

I live in Minnesota, and last winter, we did this same trick for a defective 4 year old PC. It died and was put into a trunk overnight on its way to a local repair shop. In the morning, after it was brought in from sub zero (F) temps, it booted fine! Data recovered, it turned out to be a defective mother board made with that slew of bad capacitors that plagued electronics for awhile.

But the cold option clearly gave us some borrowed time!

flabasha · Dec 5, 2007, 03:00 PM

Peeb, explain to me how with Time Machine, I wouldn't have lost more than an hour's work... when the drive failed on my Powerbook, when I was miles away from my home machine and my external backup drive?

Maybe Time Machine's more powerful than I thought. They should call it Time And Space Machine.

And yes, as the other poster noted, I'm hesitant to buy Leopard for a four-year old machine running on a G4 processor and 1GB of RAM.

peeb · Dec 5, 2007, 04:18 PM

Well, tell me how I could have known that from your original post! Of course, you could use a portable drive as a time machine drive, but it sounds like you don't want to, which is fine by me. I was just offering a suggestion.

cms · Dec 5, 2007, 05:30 PM

What a shame that a genuinely interesting and helpful thread has deteriorated into a juvenile point scoring session. Somewhat naiveIy, I thought the whole foundation of these forums was to swap helpful tips and ideas, and to help out fellow Mac users when they were having problems. Silly me.... It also illustrates -- rather depressingly in my view -- how easy it is for a thread to be completely derailed by someone Wishing To Make A Point. Sadly, I am unable to fathom quite what that point is.....

The original poster offered information that was absolutely genuinely useful and was keen to share his success story with others who might find themselves in a similarly unfortunate situation. Quite how that morphed into a propaganda exercise for Time Machine is beyond me.

But perhaps I am just being naive.....