Reviving old hard drives

[Doc Shipley]

Neil Breeden wrote:

> Bob,
> 
>  
> 
>   I've seen this work with IDE drives that wouldn't spin up due to bad
> bearings.
> 
>  
> 
>   Freeze the drive in your freezer then spin it up while it's still frozen.
> This seems to free the bearings for a short time so the drive can spin up.
> I know of a couple people who used this technique to copy the contents off a
> dead drive, they required several freeze passes to get all the data as the
> drive tends to warm up quickly once pulled from the freezer and powered up.
> 
>  
> 
>   The speculation has been that the metal contracts when frozen and releases
> stuck bearings, this has always seemed an 
> 
> 'Odd' explanation as the bearings and races should contract at the same rate
> assuming similar materials.

   Bearings and races are almost never the same alloy.  Even with 
journal bearings, where the race *is* the bearing, one peculiarity of 
solid geometry is that the larger torus contracts to a different degree 
than the smaller.

   Damned if I can remember which contracts more, though.


	Doc