Is putting a RAM in the freezer for an hour hearsay or what? ******** or what?

[Fishtalk]

My pismo just died and I think its a Ram problem...I "heard" that putting a dodgy RAM in the freezer " might" just give me enough time to copy a few important files before it crashes again..... For the moment it stays up for about 4 minutes.
Is this just hearsay or could it work? thanks

 

[eawmp1]

Never tried it myself, but I would think you would risk condensation with the change in temperature. I'd pull the hard drive instead if I needed the files.

See this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/449835/

 

[netdog]

It's likely that it might just cause water condensation and hose your system for good.

 

[edddeduck]

I am pretty sure that the freezer will not fix bad RAM. It does however work (or at least a chance of working) for Hard drives (not SSD ones the regular kind).

Check out this article: Freeze your hard drive to recover data

Edwin

 

[Tonsko]

Take the back off the machine and place some ice chips on top of the RAM. It will cool it just long enough to get the data you require.

On a more serious note, a bunch of security researchers discovered that they can extract data (i.e. encryption keys) from RAM after the computer has been turned off. They used a can of air to chill the chips to reduce the charge decay in RAM, and could then extract full or partial encryption keys. All that is incidental for you, but you could try running it and using a can of compressed air on the RAM to make sure it stays up for the minutes that you require to grab data. If it doesn't work, it's a minimal investment.

 

[tersono]

Moisture + circuit boards do not mix. Your attempt at a fix would be likely to hose your logic board. $$$$$$$

A freezer is a decent temporary fix for HD problems in extremis, but my recommendation in your case would be simply to pull the hard drive and read it from another machine.