Words Fail Me

Well, maybe not as it would make for a very short post if they had. Another day another hard disk failure. This is getting beyond a joke now with my third failure in less than a year. "Did you have it all backed up?" Ummm well, yes and no. The drive that has just failed was set up as an external disk through a USB case and I used it to back up data on the working machines. All well and good but it also contained data I'd recovered from my two previous hard disk failures (I can't be arsed finding the posts relating to them).

So, once the sobbing had subsided I stuck the disk inside a plastic bag and threw it in the freezer for an hour or so. It took a couple of attempts but it came back up, hurrah. I've stripped most of the data I really didn't want to lose to one of the networked machines and will then try and format it. "Why are you going to format it?" because checking on the manufacturers website (Seagate) it's still under warranty (until 2009?!!?). So I'll get a RMA number and fire it back to them for a replacement just like I did the last time (different drive and manufacturer). Then I'm going to lie down in a darkened room. Maybe I'll come back up maybe I won't.

History repeats 3
History repeats 2
History repeats 1

Update: 12:54 PM Added posts relating to previous failures. I noticed by trawling through my history of disk failures that the drive in question was bought as a replacement for another failed drive in July of last year. That's why the warranty has so long left to run. Pisser that it should fail in less than a year though.

Update 15:05 PM Almost all the data has been recovered now. It's surprising how much data you can "happily" lose when faced with a stark decision on what to recover first before the drive fails permanently.

I suppose I should explain why I put the disk in the freezer for an hour. To some it's an urban myth but others swear by it. To me the drive was dead, it wouldn't fully spin up and although the computer was smart enough to recognise a mass storage device had been connected on USB the drive would not come to life. In Disk Manager sometimes it would be listed but not intialised and sometimes it wouldn't even appear. On attempting to initalise Disk Manager would complain of an unknown error. This occurred on both Windows XP and Windows 2000 boxes.

The theory of placing the disk in the freezer for an hour is to cool down the drive and hopefully cause the heads to move further from the plate (metal will contract at lower temperatures). Sometimes this very small movement is enough to allow the heads to read the plates. In this case it worked. Alternatively the counter theory goes that by heating the drive up the metal will expand and again cause the heads to move. Sounds a bit dodgy to me and thankfully I didn't have to try it. Professional data recovery firms will laugh at such techniques but as they charge £100s for their services it's worth a shot. Nothing ventured nothing gained.