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On Thursday 19 February 2009 15:56:59 Peter J Murray wrote: > No one was more surprised then me this afternoon when a previously > unresponsive hard drive was left in the freezer over night, and lasted > long enough to get 800mb of data (we got ALL of the documents we > needed). This particular failure sounded like the platters were a > little loose. > > So, if you've tried everything else, this is worth a try. > > As an aside, this is the 4th Toshiba HD I've had to replace out of > various Macs and PCs over the past 4 years. Cooling disks is a time-honored tradition, but I would be *very* hesitant to leave a disk in the freezer all night and then try to use it. Remember, the worst thing you can do to electronics is to turn it on. At the microscopic level, chips get stressed when first turned on. Having them really cold and zapping them with electricity can do bad things. I've killed older electronic items left outside in a cold car. The other problem, and I don't know how much of an issue it is with today's mega-sized drives is that things like the arms holding the heads can do weird things when really cold. At least one Fujitsu disk had dire warnings about this due to contortions in the metal at low temperatures. Me, I keep a disk in the freezer till its "cold" all through, usually about 30 to 45 minutes. If a test with that didn't work, then I'd try keeping a disk in the freezer longer. This is all data that I hope no one will need to benefit from in the future! ;-) --STeve Andre'